


in the blue night

by acertainheight



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 17:40:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 43,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11514231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acertainheight/pseuds/acertainheight
Summary: Hawke's the worst bartender the Hanged Man has ever had, and Isabela's the regular she can't stay away from. Modern AU.





	1. Chapter 1

Our meeting was like the upward swish of a rocket  
In the blue night.  
I do not know when it burst;  
But now I stand gaping,  
In a glory of falling stars.

\- “Pyrotechnics,” Amy Lowell.

 i. june 9

It all starts on a Friday. That's the first sign that the whole thing—this mess, this _everything,_ this thing with a capital T _—_ might be something special. Something worth paying attention to. Because nothing important ever happens on a Friday, not for Hawke.

If she's being honest, nothing happens at all these days, Friday or not. Hawke can't remember the last time anything remotely interesting happened to her, unless you count the occasional buy-one-get-one deal on frozen pizza. Her days are inconsistent—the sort of inconsistency that accompanies part-time employment and a disastrous sleeping schedule—but even that’s dependable, in its own way. It's all the same: a haze of working, sleeping, coffee, and waiting for something to change.

But this Friday is different.

It doesn't _feel_ any different at first. It begins just like every Friday, with Hawke stirring awake only to silence the shriek of her alarm—until it goes off for the fourth time at noon and she at last determines that maybe it's time to drag herself out of bed. The water stain on her ceiling swims into focus beyond the fog of a world-record hangover and she groans, kicking off tangled blankets.

“Mngh,” she mumbles at her phone, and pokes at it until the alarm stops. She soaks in the silence for one moment before rolling to the side and sliding a few short inches off her mattress to the floor. The wood of the floor is cool and comforting against her cheek; after a few deep breaths, she pushes herself to her feet and begins a stumbling odyssey across her postage stamp of an apartment, blanket wrapped around her bare shoulders like a cloak. The walk from one side to the other takes a whopping twelve steps.

Hawke staggers into the kitchen, one hand shielding her eyes from the light through the tiny window, and reaches towards the mug (hopelessly stained and chipped, _World's Best Dad_ emblazoned on the side) waiting on the counter. Day-old black coffee makes for a Friday tradition: a brutal, bitter kick to balance out any bad choices from the night before, made possible by an eternal reluctance to do the dishes. One long swig and a coughing fit later, and she’s well on her way to a full recovery.

She surveys the kitchen, determines that almost nothing in it is edible, and crams a piece of stale bread into the toaster. The vile coffee has already started to kick in, or maybe it's just her headache pushing her back to consciousness—but whatever it is, she's beginning to feel alive again, and she hums vaguely and tunelessly to herself as she picks her way back across the room.

“G'morning, Sigourney. Nice to see you're still alive,” she tells the goldfish on her dresser; the fish blinks up at her placidly, oblivious to its long-suffering status. Hawke doesn't remember much from last night—but she does remember nearly knocking the bowl over at least three times as she hopped around the room, crashing into furniture, too drunk to get her jeans past her ankles, before finally collapsing face-first onto the mattress and immediately passing out. Sigourney Weaver puts up with a lot of nonsense for a goldfish, Hawke thinks.

She squints at the clock hanging crookedly across the room, groans, and starts digging through the pile of clothes on her floor that she's deemed semi-clean. The jeans from last night at the foot of the mattress will do, and she grabs a black t-shirt only slightly more faded than the jeans. Not technically her work uniform, but close enough. She kicks at a pile of papers to reveal a pair of worn-out sneakers and grabs a pair of socks out of the open drawer of her dresser, the one that doesn't slide back in all the way and mostly stores beat-up paperbacks.

And then she smells smoke.

The realization washes over her more with resignation than surprise. A glance across her apartment confirms her theory; her toaster is smoking, dramatic black plumes of smoke, as if it's absolutely determined to ruin her morning for the sixth time (she's counting, if only because she's decided that she'll get a new toaster once it hits double digits).

“Don't panic, Sig,” she declares; the goldfish doesn't look particularly panicked, but Hawke goes on: “Stop, drop, and roll. And don't touch the doorknobs.”

It doesn't come to that, which is probably for the best, since the fish's brief life has never contained a fire drill. Hawke's well-versed in putting out toaster fires by now; she manages to get it under control with only moderate damage to her sleeve and her dignity. But she's running late as it is, and by the time she manages to extract and butter her scorched toast, she has a bad feeling about her odds of making it to work on time. She grabs her keys (half-hidden under the stack of bills on the table), shouts a farewell to the goldfish, and tears out the door like she's being chased.

The elevator lurches and creaks as it descends, and Hawke nervously taps her fingers against the railing, gaze pinned to her watch. One minute until her bus. At last, she makes it to the bottom. She steps out from the cool comfort of her building into the street, as hot as a furnace and so bright that her headache kicks back into full force.

But she barely has time to register the heat, because she can glimpse her bus pulling away at the end of the next block.

“No! No, no, shit!” She tears down the street, shoes still unlaced and hair still unbrushed, waving her piece of toast like a flag. But the bus is gone, and another one won't be there until—well, not soon enough, that's for sure.

She indulges herself for just one moment, burying her face in her hands and mumbling a low, dramatic “fu-u-ck,” but there's not much time to waste; it's time to start walking.

It's unusually muggy for a June afternoon, the sort of afternoon that casts a dull haze over everything and sends even the most devoted lemonade stand entrepreneurs back inside and out of the heat—hot enough to remind Hawke of home for just a minute, although she's not exactly in a sentimental mood. By the time she comes to a stumbling stop in front of the Hanged Man, she feels like she's just finished a marathon: hair plastered against her forehead, t-shirt clinging to her like a tissue. Another glance at her watch: forty-eight and a half minutes late.

Even as late as she is, she pauses for a moment to brush her sweaty hair out of her eyes and take in the building in front of her. One of the neon signs in the window proclaims _OPEN_ ; another declares _BAR_ , as if anyone could look at the grimy brick exterior and imagine that the Hanged Man was anything other than the dive that it is. The folding chalkboard on the sidewalk reads _happy hour ALL NITE!!!_ , the words flanked by two smiling cartoon beer bottles. The idea of her boss toiling over the illustrations makes her grin for just one second, until she remembers she's supposed to be inside and her smile vanishes.

Hawke's been a bartender at the Hanged Man for three years now and a regular customer before that, which means the only one who's been there longer is Varric, her manager and the bar's co-owner. He owns the Hanged Man with his brother Bartrand, but only Varric ever makes an appearance at the bar (Hawke is half-convinced that Bartrand is a work of fiction, invented as some sort of elaborate tax evasion scheme). Varric had hired Hawke three years ago on a whim—glanced at her résumé, nodded noncommittally as she tried to explain the four inches of blank space at the bottom, and then asked when she could start—and their friendship had followed soon after, bolstered by a series of late nights involving too much to drink and a blaring jukebox.

But the bar is a business and a job is still a job, even if the boss happens to be her best friend, and Hawke's been warned before about showing up late. She stands there for a moment, wondering if it would be at all possible to sneak in unseen and convince him she’s been there unnoticed for an hour (answer: probably not), and then the door swings open. Hawke sighs.

“Hi, Aveline. You're here early,” Hawke says, because of course she is—Aveline has probably been early for every single shift she's ever worked. The red-haired bouncer has been working here for the past two years, nearly as long as Hawke, and Hawke has never once beaten her to work. The Hanged Man doesn't really need a bouncer, not with its clientele of relatively-polite local students and white-collar workers too cheap to go the nicer places uptown, but Varric thought that she added, in his words, a much-needed gravitas to the bar. With Aveline, gravitas means broad shoulders and a glare capable of making grown men cry from fifty yards away.

“You look like shit,” Aveline observes. She looks just a little bit smug, standing there in the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest, but her smile is fond; Hawke has a feeling that Aveline looks on her like a particularly-hapless younger sibling, which used to annoy her, but these days she's learned to appreciate having someone watching her back. Aveline makes a good touchstone: calm, aggressively reasonable, ever-constant. And constant is good.

“Thanks, I try.” Hawke runs a hand through her hair again, putting on an exaggerated grimace. “You wouldn't believe the morning I've—”

A loud _ahem_ catches their attention. Aveline offers a sympathetic sort of wince and Hawke looks to the bar. Varric is standing there, hands on the bar, glaring at her from beneath heavy brows. Hawke gulps. She's never seen him look this serious, but then again, she's never been late for every shift two weeks in a row before.

“Hi, hey, I know I'm late, I had this situation with my toaster—”

“I've had about enough of your excuses, Hawke. I should fire you.” He stares her down for a long moment and then breaks into a grin that fills his entire face. “Nah, I'm just fuckin' with you. You want any coffee? Just made a fresh pot.”

Hawke manages a groan, so relieved that she briefly thinks she might collapse right there. “Varric, you dick. I would love some coffee.”

She heads into the back and comes back out on the other side of the bar, cradling a steaming mug of coffee like it's made of gold. Her headache has eased, just a little; it's nice to be wrapped up in the darkness of the bar, almost none of the summer sunlight piercing through the dirty windows. 

Varric leans back on the counter, watching her. “Your sleeve looks, uh... singed.”

“Situation with my toaster,” she reminds him. “You know how it is. Another day, another small fire.”

“Really, though, Hawke.” Varric looks up at her. “You get a lot of slack around here. But lately it sure seems like I'm paying you for a bunch of hours you aren't actually working.”

“I was really, really close to being on time,” she insists. “Honest. But I missed my bus, and it was downhill from there.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Just saying. If you're not here on time then I have to tidy up by myself, and you know I fuckin' hate cleaning.”

“Don't be a baby,” she tells him, ruffling his hair, always ready and willing to emphasize the head-and-a-half difference in their heights. He laughs, shakes his head out of her grasp, and for the time being, things settle right back to normal.

The bar is still mostly empty—a few very devoted drunks are down at Varric's end nursing beers—but the relative stillness won't last for long. Hawke has a twelve-hour shift ahead of her (well, eleven, now), and approximately eight of them will be wild, frantic hours. It's not so bad at first, as long as Varric is there, with his own unwavering energy keeping hers high. He's always laughing, bouncing jokes off her, or telling stories (almost certainly lies) that cast a hush over the whole room as everyone strains to listen. But although Varric claims he loves these late-night shifts, he doesn't love them _that_ much, because he always ducks out soon after midnight. Hawke spends the last four hours of her shift alone—or as alone as one can be in a busy bar, everyone laughing and talking and looking right through her.

Still, there are moments of relative calm, like the moments when her friends—otherwise known as the regulars—show up. Hawke supposes the fact that she's met every single one of her friends at a bar says something slightly questionable about her, but it was inevitable: the Hanged Man is the sort of bar that attracts regulars. It's the perfect dive—loud, crowded, cheap, just run-down enough for people to say it has character without too much irony. There's Anders, the blonde graduate student always clutching a battered annotated copy of some foreign book; he spends the summers away, but comes back every autumn armed with new anecdotes about his dissertation research that no one ever listens to. Luckily, Hawke discovered early on that after a few drinks, he became willing to talk about _The Bachelorette_ instead of the means of production, which marked a turning point in their friendship.

Through Anders, Hawke met Fenris, after Varric made the mistake of introducing the two men. (“They're both freaky nerds,” Varric explained later, “so, shit, I just _assumed._ ”) Fenris takes night classes and comes by late at night to order cheap red wine by the bottle and glower out from his table in the back, occasionally coming to the front only to furiously argue with Anders about things Hawke can’t begin to understand. She can't ever tell if they like each other or want to rip each other's throats out with their bare hands. Sometimes Fenris comes to the bar early, his eyes alight, and tells Hawke about the poetry classes he's sworn her to secrecy over, resurrecting long-ago memories of Coleridge and Keats in her father's booming voice. Not exactly  _The Bachelorette_ , but more than enough to tie them together for good.

And then there's sweet Merrill, always out of place in her sundress and sandals, toting colorful tins of sugar cookies and only ever ordering soda. She's the one who holds them all together; one day she decided they would all be friends and that was that, no one ever thought to argue the point. She plans birthday parties at bowling alleys and makes dinner reservations for nearly every holiday; only a few weeks ago, she'd planned a big outing for Pick Strawberries Day (which Hawke _still_ doesn't believe exists), and Varric and Hawke spent hours pelting Anders and Fenris with strawberries under Aveline's disapproving gaze.

There are other familiar faces, too, who aren't exactly friends but still shape the world of the bar. There's the scrawny student always making big calf-eyes at Aveline—Hawke's personal favorite. The stony blonde woman who always leaves behind a stack of posters about the end of the world, which Hawke makes a point of stapling all over the bulletin board by the bathrooms. The manager from the fast food place down the block, who comes in after late shifts and always gives Hawke the best tips and the warmest smiles. Others, too. And then—last but not least—there's Isabela. But Hawke mostly tries to avoid thinking about Isabela.

“Hawke!” Varric snaps his fingers an inch away from her head and she jerks to attention.

“What? What's up?”

“You're dozing off at the bar, that's what.” He tosses her a damp rag. “Wipe some tables down. The game gets out at eight—shit'll get crazy then.”

She looks at him sideways. “You realize that's, like, six hours away. We're not in a rush.”

“Well, fuck, think how clean my tables will be.” He laughs and glances at his watch. “Things will pick up soon. Grin and bear it, and I'll send you out to grab snacks in a few.”

Shit _doesn't_ , in fact, get crazy: the game ends in another crushing defeat, and everyone who makes their way into the bar is morbid with disappointment. Some optimist puts Don't Stop Believing on the jukebox; the next person spends a dollar queuing up repeats of Love Hurts. By ten, everything is shaping up to be a smooth night. Hawke has settled into an easy rhythm. Varric's laughing, shrugging off the relentless flirting of the three college girls at his end of the bar, distracting them with a story about his adventures in Tibet (Hawke knows for a fact that Varric doesn't even have a passport—he once asked if she could sneak him over the border for a weekend and declined to elaborate when she refused). People are coming and going, tipping well, and not lingering too long. So far, so good. Everything is as it should be on a Friday.

And then Isabela walks in.

By itself, that’s not exactly noteworthy. After all, Isabela comes in every Friday night, as regular as clockwork. She sits down at Varric's side of the bar, orders one drink, maybe two, and then she leaves with whoever's been lucky enough to catch her eye that night. Hawke knows this because she spends every Friday spilling other people’s drinks while casting glances sideways at Isabela. Isabela soaks up all the light in the bar, draws everyone to her like moths to a flame; she’s pretty until she laughs, and then she’s a hurricane, mesmerizing enough to be downright dangerous even from across the room. And Hawke stares and stares, wondering what it might be like to get drawn into the gravity of a woman like that.

Once Hawke caught her looking back. But only once.

She and Varric know each other from... somewhere. Not exactly friends, but friendly, just enough to make her a thousand times more interesting. Every time Hawke asks, Varric laughs, waves his hand, and tells her _you don't want to know;_ no amount of insisting that she does want to know has ever made a difference. Varric guards Isabela like a secret and talks about her like a private joke, always chuckling and changing the subject before Hawke can get started begging for an introduction. She's the one regular Hawke doesn't know, the one woman Hawke's ever been too nervous to approach, and the best part of Friday night.

So, Isabela walking into the bar—that’s to be expected. It’s all routine enough: Hawke gives her one admiring glance, lets out a breath and shakes her head, and turns back to the group of students waiting for their beers. “Give me just a sec,” she says, reaching under the bar for a glass.

And then Isabela steps back into Hawke’s line of sight, perches on the stool right in front of her, and the ground begins to fracture at Hawke’s feet.

“Hi,” Isabela says. That does it. One syllable and the world falls apart completely.

She's even more gorgeous up close than Hawke expected: the warmest, sharpest eyes Hawke has ever seen, as gold in the barlights as the stud under her lips; dark curls that spill down over her shoulders, barely pinned back by a blue silk scarf; full lips quirked in a dizzying, dangerous smile. The weight of her gaze is almost too much for one person to bear, Hawke thinks. Almost too much to be fair. And then she remembers that she probably ought to say hello.

“Hi,” Hawke says. She clears her throat and tries to summon up something more interesting than that, but all she can manage is a stammered nothing: “Hi, hey. Can I help you?”

Isabela smiles and leans forward, bare arms on the bar, amusement bright in her eyes—like she's laughing at a joke that Hawke hasn't been let in on yet. “Hawke, right? I don't think we've had the pleasure of meeting before.”

The fact that _Isabela knows her name_ hits Hawke like a sledgehammer to the side of the head. “I—yeah. That's me. And you're—”

“Isabela,” she says, “but you already knew that, didn't you? I've seen you keeping an eye on me before.”

“Um,” Hawke says. It's not the most coherent she's ever been. “Yeah, I—I—you're usually over with Varric.”

“I thought I'd change things up tonight, try out the other side of the bar.” She shrugs, as if she hasn't just announced something momentous, something earth-shattering, something that has knocked Hawke so far off her rhythm that she might never find it again—this everything, this thing with a capital T. And then she grins: “I'm the adventurous sort.”

Hawke tries to put on some meager display of competence. “Are you looking for an adventurous drink, too?”

Isabela purses her lips and tilts her head. “Well, I'm waiting for a friend. How about something nice and cheap I can nurse until he shows up and starts buying me drinks?”

“I can handle that,” Hawke agrees. She's grateful for the opportunity to turn around and catch her breath. When she turns back, foaming glass in her hand, she's started to almost feel like a human again instead of like one big awkward stutter. “One shitty beer, as requested,” she says, setting it down with a flourish that makes Isabela smile—and makes Hawke's heart soar into her throat.

“Perfect. Thank you, sweet thing.” She arches a brow. “You don't mind if I take up a seat here, do you? I thought I might just admire the view for a bit.”

Hawke's tenuous confidence collapses. “No, no, it's fine! No problem.”

“Cheers, then.” Isabela lifts the glass to her lips, smiling over the rim. Any hope of an ordinary night flies right out the window.

Hawke expects to spend the whole night making a fool of herself, but it's easier to warm up to Isabela than she expects—so easy that she barely notices it happening. Isabela has an effortless charm about her, the kind that pulls you in and makes you forget about everything else. She talks with her hands, touches Hawke's wrists when Hawke brings her another drink, and laughs so bright and so often that Hawke feels right on the verge of forgetting her own name. Only, somehow, she manages to keep it together: she stops feeling like a teen with her first-ever crush, stops tripping over her words, and starts matching Isabela's grin with her own, their small-talk turning into a running commentary on the crowd and the night unfolding around them.  _Have you ever wanted so desperately to ask someone where he gets his hair cut? - Well, I'd hate to get him started on his mother._ Every few minutes, the surprise hits Hawke again: the grand, mysterious Isabela is a real person after all, a real person sitting right in front of her, trading jokes over cheap beer. As far as Fridays go, it's not a bad one. Not at all.

And then a party of boisterous students comes in, and Varric shouts for Hawke's assistance. When she makes it back to her side, she's relieved to see that Isabela is still sitting there alone, sipping on her drink, watching Hawke with those sharp eyes.

Hawke clears her throat. “Hi again. No friend yet?”

“Not yet.” She pauses, takes in the other patrons of the bar, and then turns back to Hawke with a smile. “Terrible crowd tonight, isn't it? Looks like it's all up to you to keep me entertained.”

“You're in luck there,” Hawke declares, straightening up. “If you haven't noticed, I'm arguably the funniest person on the planet.”

“Are you? Tell me a joke.”

Hawke has never been very good under pressure. “Why did the cookie go to the doctor?”

Isabela lifts a brow, as if to say _that's not quite what I meant_ , but she plays along anyway. “I don't know. Why?”

“Because he was feeling kind of crumb-y.” Hawke can't help but grin, unreasonably pleased at her own joke; Isabela hesitates for a minute, lips parted and brows raised, and then she bursts out laughing.

“That's horrible. Is that the best you've got?”

“Not even close. I could go all night. I'm professionally trained.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I'm duly impressed,” Isabela says. “How'd you end up here working for a bum like Varric with all that professional training?”

Hawke laughs. “Well, it's always been my lifelong dream to sell beer to college kids, so I really got lucky here.”

Isabela runs her finger around the rim of her glass. “Sounds like an interesting story.”

“It's not. I'm actually extremely uninteresting. All my good stories are stolen from Varric. But—” She pauses, looking over Isabela's shoulder. A man has just come in. He looks familiar, but only vaguely; Hawke thinks she's seen him before, but not with Isabela. He sees Isabela and starts to walk over to the two of them. “I think your friend is here.”

“Oh,” Isabela says, twisting to smile at the man now standing behind her. “Hello, handsome. Nice to see you again. Buy me a drink?”

He drops into the seat behind her, throws an arm over her shoulders, and flashes two fingers at Hawke without really looking at her. “PBR.”

Isabela looks at him askance. “You're joking. I know you're joking.” She turns back to Hawke and smiles, reaching out to cover Hawke's hands with her own. “Surprise me with something. Make it strong and expensive and dark. It's on him.”

“I can do that,” Hawke says, lifting a hand in a salute; she's rewarded with the crook of Isabela's smile, and when she returns with two drinks in hand, the reward is doubled.

The smiles count for something. But it's different after that. Every once in a while, Hawke will glance over at Isabela and see her looking back, but it's only ever for a second and then she turns back to the man, runs a hand up his arm or down his necktie, leans in to whisper something in his ear. They're not there for long—just long enough to finish their drinks and order one more round—but it feels like a century or two before the man finally raises a hand and calls Hawke over. He hands her a bill and leaves his hand outstretched for the change; Hawke drops the nickels and pennies into his palm and tries not to look too indignant.

“Headed out?” Hawke asks.

Isabela smiles, that smile that makes Hawke's heart stop for just a second, and winks. “Duty calls and all that.”

She settles her own $5 tab with a ten, which makes Hawke's jaw drop. Her companion stands when she does. Isabela nudges him, whispers something into his ear, and he rolls his eyes and drops his handful of change into the tip jar. It's so absurd that Hawke almost can't believe it.

“Bye, then,” Hawke says, unable to come up with a better line. “It was nice to meet you at last.”

Isabela nods. “I'll look forward to seeing you again, sweet thing. Next week, maybe?”

“Next week,” Hawke repeats, speaking the words like a promise—like a prayer. Surely next Friday can't be that many hours away. And as they walk away, his arm over her shoulders and her arm about his waist, Hawke can't think about anything at all but next week.

Until Varric claps a hand on her shoulder, interrupting her reverie. “Congratulations. You're the most desperate-looking sap who's ever set foot in this bar.”

“Shut up,” Hawke mumbles, but she grins despite herself. She turns to Varric with her brows raised in disbelief. “She's kind of—I mean, just, wow. She's incredible, isn't she?”

“She's—” Varric hesitates, chuckles, and shakes his head. “Something else, yeah. But she's not your type, so wipe that look right off your face. Trust me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just mean that she's not your type. Make polite conversation until you're blue in the face, but don't go getting any other ideas in your head.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hawke promises, “I'll do my best, Ma. Thanks for the words of wisdom.”

But she doesn't really mean it, not for a second. Hawke's never been very good at making the right choice, and she's not about to start now.

 ii. june 26

Hawke is, quite possibly, the worst bartender Isabela has ever had the pleasure of meeting.

Hawke's got the basics down, of course—she's not bad with a bottle opener, she can throw together a cocktail that will knock you right out, and she has an endless array of recommendations always at the ready. But any decent service extends to precisely one person at a time. She talks too long and too loud, ignores every other customer in favor of whoever she's regaling with a bad joke, and breaks glasses like her life depends on it. She's absolutely useless compared to Varric; he knows how to work a crowd, how to pay equal attention to everyone. It helps that he doesn't get nervous and spill expensive liquor all over the counter when Isabela looks at him too long. 

But Hawke—there's just something about Hawke.

And that's why Isabela spent the first night after meeting Hawke rolling her eyes at Varric as he tried to lecture her on leaving Hawke alone, not relenting until he'd given her a full account of Hawke's schedule. Sunday-Wednesday, Friday, 2 'til closing. Isabela, with her longstanding devotion to Friday and Saturday nights, had left in a foul mood: Varric had refused to rework Hawke's entire schedule to suit her. Terrible customer service.

She's been coming to the Hanged Man for years now, ever since she first moved to the city, which really ought to earn her the occasional favor from its owner. Admittedly, Varric doesn't look quite as good in a crop top as the girls down the block at the Rose, but he has better stories and cheaper drinks, and she's nearly as loyal to the dive as she's ever been to anything. (Actually, Isabela thinks he'd probably look incredible in a crop top, but he's been resistant to her suggestions so far. She’s working on it.) She's seen bartenders come and go over the years, mostly students picking up a shift or two on their way to graduation—bad ones, brilliant ones, none quite as charmingly inept as Hawke, none sticking around quite as long as Hawke. But out of all of them, Hawke's the first one Varric ever warned her to stay away from. And all he accomplished with _that_ was making Hawke the single most interesting person in the city.

“I can't help looking,” Isabela had told him indignantly one Wednesday a long time ago, when she'd been in desperate need of a midweek drink. “She's cute. You shouldn't have hired a cute bartender if I wasn't allowed to _look_.”

“Don't look,” Varric had snapped back. “She's young. And a sucker. Besides, she doesn't work your usual nights. No temptation, right?”

She'd wanted to object, but he was right about the timing: when she came in on Friday the next week, there was no sign of the pretty young bartender with the blue eyes and the awful haircut. That was that. Case closed. Out of sight and out of mind, with only a rare weekday visit earning a glimpse of Hawke and a reminder to leave her alone. 

But then, a month back, Hawke started working Fridays.

Case open.

Isabela still isn't sure what exactly possessed her to come in on that particular Friday and make her way to the left-hand side of the bar. It had been a whim, a flight of fancy—

Well, actually, it had been Aveline giving her a once-over and warning her not to start any trouble. And then it had been Varric, narrowing his eyes at her from across the room like he sensed something was up. And then it had been Hawke, her eyes widening almost imperceptibly as Isabela moved towards her, the nervous little smile that tugged at her lips. All of them looking like Isabela walking into the bar on a Friday was some cataclysmic event.

More of a dare than a whim, then.

Isabela had expected Hawke to stammer and stare, which would have been satisfying enough by itself. More Friday nights than not, she'd felt Hawke's eyes on her all night long. What she _hadn't_ expected was the recovery: the slow confidence that filled Hawke's smile, the readiness with which she laughed and rolled off easy jokes. And she hadn't expected to want to come back the next week, much less the next day.

But she had. That first Sunday, abandoning her tried-and-true schedule, she'd made her way back; she'd spent an hour laughing with Hawke, marveling at how quickly the time passed, and then left with a pretty blonde who didn't make her laugh once. And it's been two weeks of that now; July is only a few days away and Isabela's been at the bar every Friday and Sunday and Wednesday since, with more than a few other days tossed in for good measure. She's been racking up an impressive tab, but it's worth it to spend a few extra hours with Hawke—groaning at her jokes, ducking behind the bar for safety when she swears that she can juggle, trying to puzzle out what exactly it is that she likes about the worst bartender in all the world.

It's not that they're friends yet, not exactly—but they're _something._ And whatever they are, Isabela's enjoying it more than she expected. Which is why she finds herself approaching the Hanged Man at eight o'clock on a Monday night, like... well, like the sort of idiot who would show up at the Hanged Man at eight o'clock on a Monday night. 

“Isabela,” Aveline greets her at the door, as stern and irritating as ever. “What an interesting thing to wear where people might see you.”

“People seeing me is the entire point. Try it sometime.” Isabela tugs the neckline of her dress half an inch lower, just enough to make Aveline squirm. They've built up a rapport that's maybe-friendly-maybe-not over the past few years, mostly predicated on personal attacks. More of the stellar service one can expect to receive at the Hanged Man, Isabela supposes.

Aveline sniffs. “Hm. You're here for Hawke again, I suppose.”

“I'm here for a drink,” Isabela corrects her. “And because I missed you, of course.”

“You're earlier than usual.”

“But just on time to see you.”

“Or Hawke.”

Isabela scowls, casting a glance over Aveline's broad shoulders. “I don't even see Hawke today, so don't sta—”

Aveline snorts. “She's in the back. I bet she'll be out in a minute.”

“Oh. Well.” As if on cue, Hawke appears from the back, and Isabela can't help but smile, even when Aveline rolls her eyes. Hawke looks gorgeous, in a harried sort of way; even across the room, Isabela can see the frayed edges of her dark t-shirt, the tangles in the dark hair that falls over her eyes. She's not sure she's ever seen Hawke looking quite pulled together, but then again, she likes the way Hawke looks just fine. “See you in a bit, big girl,” she says, trying not to sound too eager to enter, and she makes her way to the stool she's claimed as her own.

“I have a joke for you,” Hawke says by way of greeting, sounding and looking like she's won the lottery. She has the bluest eyes Isabela has ever seen, as vivid and inconsistent as the ocean, and when she smiles, her eyes crinkle in a way that Isabela sort of wants to look at all night long. The thought makes her a little bit queasy, though not precisely in a bad way.

But Isabela is trying very hard not to think about that sort of thing. “Hi to you too. I hope you also have a drink for me.”

“I have a drink and a joke,” Hawke amends. “Which do you want first?”

“I'll take the drink first. The jokes go over better that way.”

Hawke clasps a hand to her chest. “God! Cruel! What can I get you?”

Isabela drums her fingers on the bar, looking thoughtful. “Just a beer. Something for the weather. Surprise me.”

Hawke wrinkles her nose, her whole face screwing up in serious contemplation. Then she grins. “Varric got some pretentious new something-or-other—we've only got a few, it's expensive as hell. This one's on the house.”

“How generous.” Isabela grins and gestures with her thumb at Varric, busy with a small group only a few feet away. “Does he know it's on the house?”

“Don't ask questions,” Hawke says. “I'd have to kill you.”

“Ooh. The only thing I like better than free drinks might just be stolen drinks.”

“My middle name is Danger. An old family name. We're very traditional.” Hawke cracks open a bottle and slides it to Isabela in a tulip glass. There's something lovely about it, Isabela thinks—the easy way Hawke moves behind the bar when things are slow like this, the self-assured way she pours a drink, the serious focus in her eyes. Nearly as charming as when everything is going horribly wrong. 

The beer is a warm, hazy gold; it smells tropical from the first crack, like summer itself, and Isabela feels certain she'll never go to another bar again. Hawke might be the worst bartender Isabela's ever met when it comes to things like taking orders and serving drinks, but all it took was a few weeks for her to master the art of picking out exactly what Isabela wants from a single word or two.

“Mm. How's your evening been so far?”

“It's been alright. Things are finally starting to pick up.” Hawke rubs the back of her neck. “You should've come in earlier. I could have used the company. And the tips.”

“I had plans. Maybe next week.” She smiles. “I'll make up for the tips, don't you worry.”

“What were your plans?”

“Nothing interesting. So, tell me, sweet thing—”

“Hawke!”

The bright chirp comes an inch away from Isabela's shoulder, and she flinches, certain there hadn't been anyone there an instant ago, turning to take in the source of the unexpected noise. The girl looks familiar, or perhaps just odd enough to seem familiar: big eyes, bigger smile, creeping floral tattoos peeking out from under her sunshine-yellow scarf.

“Merrill!”

Hawke's exclamation of delight jerks Isabela's attention back to her; she looks between the two of them, Hawke and Merrill, and settles a sharp smile on Hawke. “You're in demand tonight,” she says. She sounds more miffed than she means to. It's her own fault, she thinks. If she wanted Hawke all to herself, she could have shown up earlier. And she didn't.

“Isabela, this is my friend Merrill. And Merrill, this is—”

“Isabela, I know,” Merrill says, sounding cheerful. She has a warm, lilting accent Isabela can't place; she fixes Isabela with an unblinking, unnerving stare. “Hawke talks about you all the time. She thinks you're very funny. I've been hoping to meet you but I've been _so_ busy lately, I've started this club and it keeps me busy at night.”

“Oh, well—” Isabela clears her throat, somewhat disarmed. “I am, she's right about that much. What's your club?”

“Gardening,” Merrill and Hawke answer in the same moment. Merrill giggles and Hawke takes over, going on: “ _Midnight_ gardening. She's too busy making sure her flowers get enough moonlight to come see me.”

“I'm only here for a little bit, actually,” Merrill says. “But I just missed you, and I had to drop off a card I made for Varric, and then Aveline texted, and so I thought I'd swing by—”

“What did Aveline say?” Hawke asks.

“That you needed a chaperone and she only has two eyes and can't keep them both on you.”

Isabela glances down the bar. A small cluster has formed around Varric, who's moving as fast as he possibly can; it doesn't compare to the line waiting on Hawke. It's impressive, actually, Isabela thinks: she's not sure Hawke even _notices_ the people trying to get her attention. “Hawke,” she says, “you should probably serve a drink or two.”

Hawke looks like she's just remembered she's at work. “Oh! Yes! Don't go anywhere, you two, I'll be right back.” She slides a cold bottle of soda to Merrill, who looks delighted. And then she heads down the bar, leaving Isabela and Merrill sitting there, Merrill fiddling with her soda and Isabela brimming with curiosity.

“You and Hawke are friends, then? Or... ?” Isabela says, not entirely sure how to start a conversation with someone who gardens in the moonlight and knows Hawke, really _knows_ her. But Merrill perks up like it's the most interesting question she's ever been asked.

“Oh, yes, we've been friends for ages. Well, only two years. Not quite two years. One year and eleven months! I think she's splendid.”

Isabela bites her lip, casts a glance at Hawke, and then turns her smile back to Merrill. “I don't know her very well yet. Maybe you could spill some of her best secrets.”

“Oh, she's very easy to get to know. I hope you'll get to know her better. She would like that.” Merrill frowns at the soda in her hands and tries to give it another twist, with no luck. She holds it out to Isabela. “I can't get it. Can you try?”

Isabela glances at the soda—hibiscus, she notes, and makes a mental note to see if Hawke could turn it into a cocktail for her—and gives it a twist. The cap comes off in her hand, and Merrill looks like Isabela hung the moon when she hands the open bottle back.

“You don't drink?” Isabela asks.

“Oh, no, I do sometimes.” Merrill tilts her head. “Only on special occasions, though. I suppose this is a special occasion, because I've just met you, but then again, I have to walk home, so it's just as well to have a soda.”

“What's so special about meeting me? You don't have a drink to celebrate every chance encounter, do you?”

Merrill giggles. “No! I don't know. I have this feeling we're going to be friends. You're already friends with Varric, aren't you?”

“Mm. Sort of.” Isabela takes a long swig of her drink. Varric's helped her out of more trouble than she can even remember, and they get along well enough when they're trading jokes and stories, but they like each other more than they trust each other. “He's my bartender. My bar friend. I don't really _know_ him,” she says at last, leaving out a considerable chunk of truth, and Merrill nods like she understands.

“But you like him, don't you? And you like Hawke, and she's mad about you. And they're two of my favorite people in the whole world! So I think we'll be friends eventually.”

Isabela laughs despite herself. “Bar friends or regular friends?”

“Regular friends. I know it. Do you want to try my soda?”

“I'd love to,” Isabela tells her, agreeing more out of surprise than interest.

“You can have it! I have to go check on my plants. But it was _so_ good to meet you,” Merrill says, earnest and bright and ridiculously charming. Isabela can't help but smile.

“It's been fun, sweetness. Come back soon.”

Merrill kisses Isabela's cheek when she leaves, like they've been friends for years, and leaves Isabela alone at the bar with a half-empty bottle of soda and a sudden inexplicable fondness for this young woman, so certain of their future friendship. It's not a bad thought: to be welcomed in to this circle, the sort of people who exchange thinking-of-you cards and drink floral sodas and look absolutely delighted to see each other.

But only for a moment. Any more than that, and it starts to sound like... well, not something Isabela's looking for. Trying to make Hawke laugh all night is one thing; Hawke's friends are another thing. And the spark of irritation when Merrill came in and claimed Hawke's attention—that's a feeling that Isabela doesn't like one bit.

Mercifully, someone fills Merrill's spot a minute later, before she can spend too much more time thinking about Hawke and Hawke's friends and everything in between. Isabela takes in her new company: he's handsome, long-lashes and artful stubble on a square jaw, well-dressed in an insufferable-and-works-in-finance sort of way. He's young—maybe Hawke's age, maybe older. He looks confident. And easy. A little bit more like what she's looking for than moonlight gardening.

Their eyes meet. “You're not going to ask me if this seat's taken?”

He pauses; his eyes rake over her, and then he looks at her with a slow smile, like he likes what he sees. “Actually, I was going to ask if I could buy you a drink. But if the seat's taken...”

“It's not.” She smiles, and he grins back, dumb enough to think he's got the upper hand.

“Nice. What's your drink, then?”

“Guess and you win a prize.” She rests her chin on her palm.

He tugs his lip between his teeth, gives her another once-over, and then leers, confident. “Something sexy. But sweet. Cosmo?”

She purses her lips. “No prize for you. My turn. Gin and tonic, but only because you think it makes you seem classy. It doesn't.”

He looks surprised, then laughs. “When I come to a shithole like this, it's for a cheap beer. Come on, what's your drink?”

Isabela wants to defend the bar, even if it really is indefensibly a shithole, and part of her wants to tell him to fuck off, and part of her just wants to get the talking part over with and let him distract her from hibiscus soda and blue eyes. But then Hawke is there, leaning on the bar, her eyes bright and burning on Isabela, her smile a flicker across her lips as she interjects: “She's a Laphroaig woman. Isn't that right?”

It's not _exactly_ true—when Isabela's there alone, when she has time for more than a summer-bright beer, she likes to order cocktails, the complicated ones that Hawke makes slowly, that command all of Hawke's attention. When she comes in early, it's always a mojito (makes her think of home, keeps Hawke right in front of her for as long as possible). Later in the evenings, Hawke's been tinkering with the perfect Manhattan; Hawke says that in another week or two, she'll have to start calling it the Isabela.

But when she's getting a free drink brought by a handsome man who looks all too sure of himself, that's something different; she and Hawke have laughed about it on other nights, studied the bottles on the wall, and carefully selected the most expensive options. Something strong, always neat. Something she can sip slowly, something just a little intimidating.

It works: he appears adequately intimidated. “Okay, well, get the lady her usual. And I'll get, uh—” He puts on a grin meant to look confident; Isabela thinks he looks a little bit out of his depth. “Whatever your favorite IPA on tap is.”

Hawke pushes away from the bar, eyes lingering on Isabela for a moment, and she smiles. “Coming right up.”

He straightens his tie. “You know, I don't think I even got your name, and you've got me investing in the good stuff.”

“Give me yours, and then we'll see about that.”

“Jake.”

She touches his leg. “Don't worry, Jake. You're making a good investment.”

He looks pleased; when he leans in close to whisper in her ear just how pleased he is, her focus drifts away to Hawke, setting down their drinks. Isabela reaches to touch her wrist, the lightest graze.

“Thank you, sweet thing.”

A smile returns to Hawke's face. “Of course.”

But then Jake's speaking again: “That's a strong drink for a girl, isn't it?”

“Mm,” she says, and she lifts the glass to her lips. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Hawke moving down the bar. “That's the way I like it.”

“That's impressive. I like a chick who could drink me under the table.”

She eyes him over her glass. He's pretty, she thinks, but he'd be prettier if he could keep his mouth shut. Maybe after another drink or two she'll be just tipsy enough to put up with him. “Then I suppose I'm just what you're looking for.”

“That depends.” He rests one heavy hand on her thigh. “I'm looking for someone who'd like to get out of here soon, go somewhere a little more private for another drink. Is that you?”

“It is.” She inclines her head, smile playing on her lips. “Aren't you a lucky boy?” It's not a question; she's pleased to see that he looks like he knows it.

“Good. I don't like to waste a lot of time sitting around.” He sips on his beer and lifts his brows, like he thinks he's being artfully subtle. Isabela can't wait to shut him up.

“Why don't we finish our drinks and take it from there, gorgeous?”

He glances at his watch again and nods. “Cool. I'm gonna go take a piss. I'll be right back.”

The moment he's gone, Hawke appears, like she's been waiting. “How's your date going?”

Isabela shrugs. “He's an idiot, but a pretty idiot.”

“That's something, isn't it?”

“Oh, that's everything.” And it's true: she doesn't like to work too hard for her fun. That's the point of a place like this, all play and no work. That's always been the point here. Still, she can't help but keep Hawke in front of her for a moment longer. “You know, you never told me that joke you promised, sweet thing.”

Hawke visibly brightens. “Oh!” She leans forward to rest her hands flat against the bar. Her voice drops to a low, dramatic whisper. “Are you sure you're ready? This is a pretty good one.”

“I'm ready.”

“What did the traffic light say to the car?”

“I don't know,” Isabela starts, and then a hand claps down firm on her shoulder. Jake's back. In the same instant, Hawke's gone again, back down the bar.

“Let's go ahead and get out of here,” he prompts, checking his watch for what must be the tenth time in ten minutes. He wipes at his nose and sniffs. She can't wait to get him in bed and shut him up. “I don't have all night, you know.”

She starts to follow him our and then pauses. “Hold on a second,” Isabela says, and she turns away from him, presses up to the bar through the small crowd, and catches Hawke's attention again. “You owe me a punchline.”

Hawke's smile is as slow and sweet as molasses; Isabela thinks that someone ought to kiss it off her. “'Don't look, I'm changing.'”

Isabela laughs despite herself, and then Hawke is laughing too, eyes crinkling, and Isabela feels warm all the way to her toes. “Did you practice that one?”

“Hours. Hours in front of the mirror.”

“Impeccable delivery. Nine out of ten.”

Jake's hand settles on the small of her back.

“Alright. I'm heading out for the night,” Isabela says. She lets her fingers brush over the back of Hawke's hand, resting there on the bar between them, and then she finally pulls away. “It was good seeing you, though.”

“Yeah.” Hawke nods. “Yeah, it was. Have fun.”

“I will.” She winks; Hawke smiles but doesn't laugh.

When Isabela chances a look back over her shoulder, halfway out the door, Hawke is still watching her. Hawke looks away the instant their eyes meet, back to the customer that has already filled Isabela's seat. For one brief moment, Isabela considers turning back, sitting down and laughing at Hawke's terrible jokes all night long. It might be alright. Just this once.

Isabela hesitates, and then the door swings shut, the rumble of the bar replaced with the noises of the street. She lets out a breath.

“Your place or mine?” the man at her side asks.

She glances at him and puts on a smile. “Jack—”

“Jake.”

“Jake,” she amends. He _looks_ like a Jake. She ought to be able to remember that. “I think a gentleman usually offers his.”

“Cool,” he says. He reaches for his phone. “I can get an Uber.”

Her lips quirk in not-quite-a-smile. “Come on, sweetness, put that thing away.” And she guides his hand back to his pocket, palming his thigh with one hand while she hails a cab with the other.

In the cab, Isabela finally gets him to stop talking; she straddles his lap, loosens his tie, and does her best to make him forget his own name just as thoroughly as she has again. And when they get to his apartment, she doesn't waste any time pushing him through the sleek kitchen and into the bedroom, with its blank walls and expensive sheets and nothing at all to suggest that what's-his-name might be a real person. Just the way she wanted it.

But later, when she closes her eyes, her hands on his bare chest, his hips bucking against her, all she can picture is Hawke: crooked smile, ocean eyes, Isabela's name on her lips. Wouldn't _that_ be nice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been working on this for... literal years, on-and-off, which is, uh, extremely embarrassing. ;_; i just can't stop coming back to it - can't finish it but can't bear to toss it out, either. i've finally decided that the only way to stop messing with it is to just post it. not sure how much of an audience there is for these two at this point. but. well. i would still go to war for hawkebela tbqh and hopefully am not alone in carrying this torch.
> 
> 52k words completed and all the rest thoroughly drafted, so, buckle in and updates will come (i promise! i will not abandon this fic, i couldn't if i tried, and i have definitely tried). polishing things and then throwing it out of my hands forever!!! as ever, comments/kudos are v appreciated. <3
> 
> original prompt: "hawke is a bartender. isabela is a regular at the bar, known for a new 'drinking buddy' every week. hawke wants to be one of them. isabela wants to completely ravish hawke."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all i... i don't get ao3 emails and i forgot i ever hit post on the first chapter, i thought i still had a draft sitting here waiting to go up, no rush, nbd, and then... i logged in for the first time in ages ;_; apologies to all two people who might still care about this after eternal abandonment

 iii. july 11

For three years, Hawke has spent most of her shifts at the bar in a fog, occasionally coming out of it to trade a vulgar joke with Varric or smile at a friendly face—but always, always slipping back. It would be one thing, maybe, if this were her passion—if she could wistfully reflect on childhood dreams of someday making small talk with drunk strangers well into the early morning. But it isn’t, and of course, she can’t. (Not that she knows what her passion might be, unless eating just the marshmallows out of a box of Lucky Charms counts.)

And that’s alright, really. A job can be just a job. She likes free drinks and she likes Varric and Aveline and she likes sleeping late. But there’s no escaping the dull cloud of boredom. Three years and it's been part of the job from the first week.

Or at least that’s how things used to be. Lately, though, she's been on high alert. Her senses downright throb; her heart beats at a pace that can't possibly be sustainable; she doesn't miss a single person who steps through the doors of the Hanged Man. And every once in a while, her efforts pay off. Sometimes, on the luckiest of Tuesday evenings—like tonight—Isabela walks through the double doors and makes her way across the crowded room to Hawke.

When Isabela perches on the same stool as every night, with the same smile creasing her face, the familiar space of the bar transforms into something brand new. “Hello, sweet thing," she says, her voice molten gold and her eyes brighter than the sun. "What do you have for me today?”

“Isabela,” Hawke exhales as a greeting, the rest of her vocabulary momentarily forgotten. “Uh, excellent customer service and cheap drinks?”

“Music to my ears. Want to make me something special?”

Hawke grins, always delighted by that invitation—proof that Isabela’s planning to stay a while. “You know I do.”

Each night, she comes a little closer to figuring out exactly what Isabela likes; it's all trial and error, experimentation and adjustment, based on little more than Isabela's expression—crinkled nose, pursed lips, or a wide smile. Rum is usually a safe bet, Hawke's discovered, and fruity is good as long as it's more sour than sweet. For the first time (which is rather grim, actually, Hawke thinks), making drinks is genuinely fun. Of course, it doesn't hurt that Isabela's devastatingly gorgeous and an excellent tipper.

Tonight she opts for rum, ginger beer, grapefruit juice, and orange liqueur—another hopeful attempt to capture summertime in a glass, or lightning in a bottle, or something like that. It’s more suited to the beach than a late night in the city, but that’s the way Isabela likes it. And anyway, Hawke thinks, it's easy to forget that she's spending her night in a dirty dive when Isabela's there to light up the room.

“So,” Hawke says, shaker in hand, doing her very best to make conversation and capture Isabela’s attention, “will your friend from last night be back tonight to quiz me on obscure cocktails again? He seemed nice.”

Isabela laughs and lifts a brow. “Did he?”

“No, wait—tall. That's the word I'm looking for. He seemed tall.”

“Very tall,” Isabela agrees.

“You could do better,” Hawke says, bright enough that it sounds nearly casual.

“You might be right. I have a date tonight—she's an accountant, believe it or not. If I play my cards right, I think I can slip in a few questions about my taxes.”

“She's coming here?”

Isabela shakes her head. “We're meeting at the Rose. It's her usual spot, apparently. But you know I had to swing by and see my favorite bartender first.”

Delight coils in Hawke's chest, like she'd never heard a compliment in all her life better than favorite bartender. “Varric's over there, so—”

“You know it's you. Varric's never once given me a free drink.”

“Is that all?” With a flourish, she sets the drink in front of Isabela.

“And he's not nearly as sweet.” With her first sip, a smile fills her face. “Mm. That's delicious. Whatever you did, don't forget it.”

As if Hawke could forget an instant with Isabela. It's embarrassing, really. Downright dangerous.

The bar slowly starts to fill up, and Varric's pointed looks eventually remind Hawke that she does have a job to do other than hovering around Isabela. But even when she's down at the other end of the bar doing little more than opening cheap beers and counting change, she can't keep from glancing back at Isabela every other minute. Isabela makes it difficult to do her job. Not quite impossible—but nearly.

It was one thing when Isabela was on the other side of the room and Hawke counted herself lucky just to glimpse her through the crowd. But it's different now, with Isabela a breath away. It means a whole night thinking about Isabela, not a minute; it means noticing the light reflecting in her eyes and the one curl she can’t ever get to stick behind her ear, not the cut of her dress. And it means an increasing familiarity with the men and women who keep Isabela company when Hawke’s cracking open bottles and trying not to stare.

When Hawke talks to Isabela, she feels like the whole world shrinks down to the two of them—like Isabela's laugh is something for her alone, like every touch and every smile is a sworn secret. And then she moves down the bar and spends the night watching Isabela laugh into someone else's ear, letting them in on the same secrets, and Hawke remembers that _favorite bartender_ is still just someone you say goodbye to halfway through the evening.

But not tonight. Tonight Isabela's all hers, at least until she disappears to see some accountant at the next-shittiest bar in the neighborhood. Hawke can almost forget about the last part. Out of sight and out of mind. Isabela looks magnetic—radiant—even just sitting there by herself. Just once, Hawke thinks, she’d like to be sitting on the stool beside her.

It's almost a relief when Isabela catches her staring; she smiles and summons Hawke back with a wave.

“Did you want something else?” Hawke asks, taking Isabela's glass and trying not to look too embarrassingly hopeful.

Isabela leans close, conspiratorial delight shining in her eyes. “Do you see Mr. Clean over there? Let's see if we can get him to leave those poor girls alone and buy me that drink we've been working on.”

It doesn't take Hawke long to spot the target of Isabela's attention. He's tall, six-foot-something, with a shaved head, scruffy stubble, and muscles straining against the confines of a white t-shirt—and he looks intent on intimidating two nervous young women who visibly want nothing to do with him. He's even got a ring glinting in one ear, as if he'd just stepped off a bottle of soap, and Hawke barely turns a laugh into a cough.

“Do you think you can pull it off?”

Isabela gives her a haughty look, though it dissolves into a grin as she stands. “I know I can.”

Hawke's always considered flirting to be an impossible, otherworldly skill, far beyond her capacity as a mere mortal; as with everything, Isabela makes it look easy. It's not quite two minutes before she's weaving her way back towards the bar, her target a step behind her as if she had him leashed. Across the room, the two girls he'd been bothering look positively dizzy with relief.

“Hi,” Hawke greets them. “How can I help you?”

He squeezes his way into the spot between the barstools and gives Isabela a leering look before he turns to Hawke. “Can I get, uh... a Sex on the Beach?”

“I'm only taking real orders, so no.”

He laughs too loud and too long. “Vodka Red Bull. And what can I get you, babe?”

Isabela taps the bar, looking thoughtful. “Can I get a Manhattan—extra-special?”

“Get the lady anything she wants.”

Hawke turns her back right away, hiding her smile from Isabela and her unsuspecting target. He’s perfect, made entirely of blustering machismo, like he’d been plucked into existence from her chat with Isabela a week ago about exactly the sort of character they’d like to ban from the bar. Isabela, ever practical, had informed Hawke that the revolution starts with free drinks.

It's the first time Hawke’s ever mixed Belvedere and Red Bull, hopefully the last. She stays on the top shelf for Isabela—the Glenlivet 18 that would turn Varric purple if he knew she was mixing it in a cocktail, half an ounce Bénédictine, two dashes of orange bitters, half an ounce Vya—sweet, just botanical enough to bring out the herbal notes in the Scotch. Hawke couldn't be more grateful for Varric's tendency to blow money on fancy liquor none of their customers have ever wanted.

“Let me know when you're ready to pay,” she tells them, and she moves down the bar to take another order.

Isabela works quickly. Hawke tries to avoid looking at them too obviously, but she keeps catching glimpses: Isabela's hands on his arms, her eyes doing half the work of seduction, his rapidly emptying drink. It's not long before he summons Hawke back with a too-loud shout.

“Hey, bartender! I'm tryin' to get out of here, come over and do your job!”

“Alright,” Hawke says, and she pretends to run the numbers in her head like she hasn't been waiting for this moment. “That's gonna be forty dollars and fifty cents.”

He stares at her for a long moment, the tips of his ears reddening. “Did I hear you right?”

“Forty,” Hawke repeats.

“And tip,” Isabela adds. “Don't forget.”

“For two drinks? You're fucking kidding me.”

“Red Bull's expensive.” Hawke shrugs.

When Isabela laughs at that, he looks between them with slow-dawning awareness joining the fury in his face. “You think you can get away with this? You bitches—”

Steel replaces all the honey in Isabela's voice: “I _know_ we can. You can pay for harassing those girls here or with a broken nose.”

He jerks back from the counter, so fast and ungainly Hawke thinks he might tip over. His voice turns to a shout. “Like hell I will! This is—it's fucking criminal, is what it is!”

“Okay,” Hawke says, more careful now, “well, that's the cost of what you drank, so you can pay it or I can call the cops.”

The man looks ready to explode; Isabela looks ready to light the fuse. And then a cool, low rumble of a voice interrupts: “If I were you, friend, I would pay and leave. And I'd find somewhere new to drink.”

Fenris looks a good deal more intimidating than he is—which is really saying something, since he _is_ extremely intimidating. Hawke's never met anyone with better posture, matched only in rigidity by his worldview. His presence gets the job done. Red-faced and with gritted teeth, Mr. Clean digs a credit card out of his wallet; Hawke doesn't bother asking if he'd like to add a tip. As he shoves his way out of the bar, Hawke, Fenris, and Isabela wait until he's completely gone before turning to look at each other. Isabela is the first to laugh.

“I think that went well! Thank you for the intervention, tall-dark-and-handsome.”

Fenris bares his teeth in an almost-laugh. “You must be the infamous Isabela.”

“Mhm, something like that. And who are you?”

Hawke leans forward, eager to break their eye contact: “This is my friend Fenris, who was just on his way to get a drink from Varric.” She waggles her brows at Fenris in the least-subtle hint she can possible manage. Only two nights ago, she'd spent the better part of a half-hour waxing poetic to Fenris about the wonders of Isabela's company. Possibly a line or two about her ass, too. One word from him and Hawke's prepared to drop down dead right on the spot.

“Ah, it's nice to see you too, Hawke, your gratitude means so much—”

“Goodbye! Get moving!”

Fenris chuckles and lifts his hands, taking a step away. “A pleasure to meet you, Isabela. I'm sure I'll see you around.”

Isabela frowns at his retreating back before looking back at Hawke with a raised brow. “Don't you want me to meet your friends?”

“They're all terrible, actually, so no.”

“I liked Merrill.”

“Merrill is perfect,” Hawke allows. “You're right. The rest of us are terrible.”

“Well, still, I'm curious—”

Hawke interrupts. “Is that a cop?”

“Ha, ha. Nice try. I'll have you know I haven't done anything illegal for three whole hours.”

“No, really—look. Shit.” Hawke exhales. “There’s no way Mr. Clean could have called the cops already, right?”

Isabela twists, glances over her shoulder, and groans. “It's not a crime to get a drink from a drunk sleaze. It can't have anything to do with us.”

She's right; whoever he is, the cop has no interest in Hawke or Isabela. They watch with the same dazed awe as Aveline meets the uniformed officer across the room and leans in to whisper in his ear. They’re as close as any pair in the bar, trading whispers, brushing shoulders and fingertips like they might fall right into a waltz to the classic rock stylings of the jukebox. Hawke has to gape at them for a solid minute before it actually, really hits her: this is Aveline flirting. With a man. A real live human being.

Isabela grabs at Hawke’s wrist, her jaw practically on the floor. “Look at him,” she breathes. “Look at those sideburns. Where did she _find_ him?”

Hawke swallows and tries not to think about Isabela's hand on her wrist. “Look at Aveline making eyes at him!”

“We have to meet him,” Isabela declares, and before Hawke has time to agree, she's shouting across the room: “Aveline! Aveline, bring your boyfriend over here!”

Aveline shoots them a furious look, fiery enough to burn down the bar, and whispers something else in his ear. He nods, straightens up, and kisses Aveline's cheek—here Isabela clutches Hawke's hand so hard it hurts—and makes his way through the crowd and back out the front door. As Aveline stalks towards them across the bar, Isabela practically howls in disappointment.

“Aveline! No!” As Isabela finally pulls away, throwing her hands up in dismay, her fingers brush over Hawke's knuckles in a way that Hawke is half-convinced has to be intentional and half-convinced must be accidental. 

“Have you ever heard of leaving well enough alone?” Aveline demands, coming to a stop behind Isabela with crossed arms and stormy eyes.

“Does Officer Well Enough find you intimidating? I don’t, so don’t bother.”

Hawke jumps in before Aveline manages a retort: “Who was that?”

“That,” Aveline says, “was Donnic. Sometimes we eat dinner together. And if either of you so much as ever says a word to him, I'll have your heads.”

“She's blushing. She can blush!” Isabela gasps. She looks absolutely delighted, like Aveline has planned all of this just for her personal entertainment.

“She is,” Hawke agrees absently. “It's adorable.” Any other day, she'd be pestering Aveline for every detail, desperate to find out how her friend managed to keep a secret as thrilling as a sideburned-cop. But tonight Hawke is looking at Isabela, not Aveline, watching the curve of her lips and the smiling lines at the corners of her eyes. It must be nice, she thinks, to have a date. To meet someone for dinner.

Aveline scowls. “I detest you both.”

“You're darling,” Isabela tells her, and Aveline's scowl deepens.

“Don't you have somewhere better to be?”

Isabela only sighs, casts her gaze around the room, and then looks back to Aveline. “I'm still waiting for somewhere better to walk in. Maybe a redhead, so I can think about you.”

Aveline looks like her head might erupt. “I ought to throw you out of here! Don't think I won't!”

“Ooh, handle me rough all you’d like, big girl.”

“One more word from you and you're out on the street.” For once, Aveline sounds like she means it.

“Fine.” Isabela makes a face at Aveline. “You're no fun. Anyway, it's time to get my taxes done. I'll see you around, Hawke.”

Hawke returns her wave and watches, holding her breath, until Isabela disappears out the door. Back to not giving even a fraction of a shit about any of this, she thinks.

And then Aveline, still there, interrupts: “What's that about taxes?”

“Oh.” Hawke takes a rag to Isabela's square of counter. “She's trying to seduce an accountant, I think.”

“It's July,” Aveline says.

“It's a joke.” Hawke frowns. “It was funnier when she was saying it.”

“Ah. Right.” Aveline clears her throat. “Hawke. Should we have a talk?”

“About your date? Definitely.”

“About Isabela.”

Hawke groans. “Let's not.”

“You've got to stop with her. It would be one thing if you were friends—I'd still question your taste, but you and I both know that's not what's happening here.”

“We are friends, actually,” Hawke says.

“Don't sleep with her. You're only going to get hurt if you do.”

“Since when am I trying to sleep with her?”

“Since you started making that stupid face every time she looks at you.”

“I like her as a friend  _and_ she happens to be objectively gorgeous. Those are two separate things.” It's a technicality, and one that certainly leaves out a good deal of the truth: that those two separate things are hopelessly entangled, that Hawke's initial admiration of Isabela's beauty is now throughly knotted up with the way Isabela never stops making her laugh, that she spends every shift imagining that Isabela might someday look at her in just the right way. But of course, Hawke knows, Aveline doesn't need to hear that.

“What are two separate things?” a familiar voice interrupts.

Hawke nearly leaps over the bar to embrace the man approaching from behind Aveline, the best distraction she’s ever seen, more than a month before she’d expected to see him. “Anders! What—when did you get back in town?”

Anders grins and drops onto a bar stool, slotting back into place like he’d never left, with only the hint of a tan and slightly-longer blond hair to suggest he'd been away. He leans forward, elbows on the bar. “Just in time to catch up on some gossip, apparently. Tell me everything.”

And then, because Hawke absolutely can't catch a break—and because one of them can hardly exist without being shadowed by the other—Fenris appears on Anders’ other side. “Hawke has a thing for Isabela.”

“What are you doing back so soon, Anders?” Hawke tries, rather hopelessly. "How's your research?"

Inevitably, Anders ignores her. He lifts both brows. “Isabela? Not _the_ Isabela?”

“The one and only,” Aveline confirms.

Hawke groans. “Can we talk about something else?”

“No,” Aveline says. Anders and Fenris both shrug.

“I haven't decided if I'm invested yet. I'm a neutral party trying to get a drink,” Anders says. True to his word, when Hawke passes him a beer, he looks a good deal happier. “Why do we care so much about Hawke's little crush?”

“It’s not a crush,” Hawke says. Everyone cheerfully ignores her.

“Because it’s Isabela,” Aveline says.

“Because Hawke won’t stop talking about her, and it’s extremely boring,” Fenris adds.

Anders looks thoroughly lost. “So why don’t you just sleep with her and get it out of your system? From what I've heard, all you'd have to do is ask.”

Aveline snorts. “It's so easy to get in bed with her even Hawke could do it, is that it?”

“Hey!” Hawke yelps, which no one hears over their laughter.

“It’s a fair point,” Anders says, tapping the bar for emphasis. “What’s the excuse, Hawke? Trying to be more than a fling?”

Hawke flinches. “I'm not trying to be anything.”

“It's just—” Aveline exchanges a glance with both of the others, and Hawke is suddenly struck by the thought of all the conversations they might have about her when she's not around. It's not a nice thought, really. “Well, we know that you can take things hard, Hawke. I remember how things were with—”

"Stop," Hawke interrupts, finally sharp enough to actually quiet them. She shakes her head. “I appreciate your concern. But honestly, relax. It's not that serious.”

Aveline leans back and makes as if to stand. But before heading back to her post at the door, she shakes her head one more time. “I'm only worried because I care about you, you know. Don't get in over your head.”

Hawke gives her a smile that she hopes says something like _I'm a mature adult not at all prone to bouts of messy romantic infatuation._ “You know I'm too tall for that, Aveline.”

It works, in the moment. Aveline laughs the subject away and Hawke can focus on plying Anders and Fenris with free drinks and celebrating the real start of summer, with Anders back from his month away and all their friends officially back in their city. Eventually, Aveline leaves, and as the night drags on, Anders and Fenris follow her; Varric's the last friendly face to say goodnight.

But it's not the first time Hawke's heard that line, and it keeps rattling in her head long after she's locked the Hanged Man and retreated to her apartment. Like all of her friends are waiting for her to inevitably get in over her head, whatever that means.

Well, to hell with it, Hawke thinks. New approach. Full steam ahead.

iv. july 28

There's just something about Friday. Maybe it's only the excitement of the end of the week—or maybe it's that Isabela knows Hawke's always at the bar on Friday, the one certainty to her shifting schedule these past few weeks. Whatever it is, Isabela wakes up on Friday morning already looking forward to the end of the day.

On Tuesday, Hawke hadn't been working; Isabela had sat there all night, nursing a beer, exchanging dirty stories with Varric, and secretly hoping Hawke would show up halfway through. She didn't, of course. On Wednesday, Varric had apparently been feeling merciful enough to text her mid-afternoon: _fyi H is off tonight_. So she'd stayed in, caught up on work, broken a nail opening a beer, and seethed all night about not having a pretty blue-eyed bartender to do her dirty work for her. And Thursdays were Hawke's day off; Isabela knew her schedule well enough for that. The week before had been just as unusual. Two weeks now, and Isabela's seen Hawke only two times.

So by the time Friday arrives, Isabela feels like she’s been starving for days. It takes a lifetime for the afternoon to bleed into evening; she does her makeup and takes it off three times in a row before she settles on something, so antsy that sitting there doing nothing—or doing something useful—is absolutely impossible. All she can bear to do is apply and reapply lipstick that no one will notice in the bar lights anyway. It’s not fair, the way that Hawke’s absence has turned Isabela useless. That’s what she thinks about the entire walk to the bar: how goddamn irritating it is that someone _not_ being around can throw her off her mark like this. She can handle Hawke, can get through an evening of drinks and laughter with only the occasional dirty thought. But this—it’s like Hawke has disappeared from the bar and taken up residence in the back of Isabela's mind instead.

It just won’t do, Isabela thinks. It’s not right. That’s what she thinks all the way to the bar and through the doors and across the room. 

And then she sees Hawke, and all she thinks is: _god, it’s been a long week_.

“You look amazing tonight,” Hawke greets her, with the smile that Isabela’s been dwelling on for days.

Isabela lifts a brow at that, as if she wasn’t dressed entirely for the sake of extracting a blush or two from Hawke—as if anyone would wear heels this high and a skirt this tight for the fun of it. “Hello to you too. Aren't you supposed to ask me what you can get for me?”

“I'm flirting,” Hawke says like it's the most obvious thing in the world. “You're going to be wowed by my charm and empty your wallet into the tip jar. That's how bartending works.”

“Is it?”

“It is. Look it up online. 10 Secrets Your Bartender Doesn’t Want You Know.”

“Fascinating,” Isabela says. She pauses, briefly considering that flirting is a terribly brazen word for Hawke, and rests her chin in her hands. “I like your shirt. Who’d you steal it from?”

Hawke looks down at her navy t-shirt like she's forgotten what she's wearing. “My sister.” She pauses and grins, guilty as charged. “But I could have gone to Yale, you know. I'm really smart. And funny. And good-looking.”

“You are funny,” Isabela says agreeably, and bites back a smile at the indignant look Hawke puts on. “Are you in school here, then?” she asks. Hawke looks young enough to be a student, she thinks, as far as she can tell—but then again, she's never set foot on a campus in her life. Still, Hawke has to be the youngest of her friends excepting Merrill, if only because that might explain the glares Isabela keeps getting from all the rest every time she sets a hand on Hawke.

“I was, before I started here, but I didn't finish.” Hawke smiles, nonchalant about it. And then, more hurriedly, as if she's caught on to what Isabela's getting at: “A while ago. I'm twenty-five in August, it's been ages.”

Isabela crinkles her nose and wonders if Varric's already told Hawke just how many twenty-ninth birthday parties Isabela's invited him to. “Are you from the area?”

“No, no, my family's down south, right in the middle of nowhere. I was drawn in by the scholarships. And the incredible job opportunities.” She holds out a hand, gesturing at the less-than-scenic expanse of the bar.

“Very wise. Entrepreneurial spirit.”

Hawke laughs, vividly loud, and Isabela can’t keep from smiling. More information to file away in the back of her mind: a sister, a birthday, a family. At this rate, Isabela’s going to know absolutely everything there is to know about Hawke. She already knows enough to write a book. She knows Hawke’s supposed to wear glasses but she thinks they make her nose look too big, she knows that every Saturday night Hawke gets takeaway from that little Thai place down the street from the bar and watches reality television, she knows every embarrassing song that Hawke always sings along to on the jukebox.

But Hawke doesn't know anything about Isabela. And she doesn't seem to mind.

Hawke opens herself up without ever thinking. She pours herself out without ever going empty. Isabela doesn't know how to do that; sometimes she wishes she did. Mostly she’s still trying to determines if it’s something she likes about Hawke or if it scares her half to death.

“Do you want to take a smoke break with me?” Isabela leans forward and lifts a brow with the practiced certainty of someone who's rarely denied.

But Hawke hesitates. “I mean, I do technically have a job to do.”

“I've never once seen you really doing your job.”

“I don't smoke.”

“That's not the point.” Isabela flashes a smile. “The point is that I get to have you all to myself.”

That works exactly as well as she hoped. She follows Hawke out the back door and into the narrow alley behind the Hanged Man. The night would be sweltering without the breeze turning it perfect; it tousles Hawke's hair, lifts Isabela's curls, and makes the whole world feel new. There's enough light in the alley to see Hawke in sharp relief, and Isabela realizes that it's the very first time she's seen Hawke lit up by anything but barlights, a strange and staggering thought. The first time that they've stood together in—well, not silence, but beyond the roar of the bar. It makes her head hurt.

Isabela offers her a cigarette with one dangling between her own lips, but Hawke shakes her head.

“I told you, I don't smoke.”

Isabela groans and tucks the pack away, lifting the cigarette from her lips. There's the faintest note of moral rectitude in Hawke's voice, Isabela's least favorite thing. “I didn't think you meant it. What kind of bartender doesn't smoke?” She looks at the cigarette in her fingers. “Well, do you mind if I do?”

“No, no, it's cool!” Hawke's smile is wide and convincing. "Go for it.”

Isabela stares at the cigarette in her hand, sighs—feeling almost embarrassed about even asking, and more than a little perturbed at both Hawke and herself for that—and takes it between her lips again. She lights it with a click, her hand cupped around the flame in the wind, and takes a long drag. That goes a long way towards lessening her irritation, and she offers Hawke a smile. “I know I shouldn't, but it's a good excuse to get out of there for a minute. Anyway, I figure the drinking will kill me first.”

Hawke laughs. “Are you a doctor?” she teases, and Isabela smiles and leans into her warmth, like a vine angling towards the sun.

“How'd you know?” She turns her head away from Hawke to exhale a cloud of smoke before leaning back in, close enough to breathe Hawke in instead. It's the first time they've been this close—the first time they haven't had the bar between them—and it's nice, Isabela thinks. Hawke's taller than she realized, and this close together, Isabela can't avoid tilting her head up towards Hawke as they talk. Idly, foolishly, a quiet voice in the back of her head suggests that it would be a lovely time to get kissed.

“Do you want to hear a joke?” Hawke asks.

“Oh, Christ,” Isabela mumbles, a sharp burst of smoke following the words. “I take it back. Your jokes will kill me long before this.”

“I'm taking that as a yes.” Hawke beams, looking positively pleased with herself. And then, right as she winds up for some horrible joke, her phone chimes. “Speaking of my sister,” Hawke says. She casts a glance down at the screen, smiles, and flicks her gaze back to Isabela. “Do you have any siblings?”

Isabela purses her lips and takes a breath. “My family's not interesting,” she says, all false brevity. “Tell me about your sister. What's in the text?”

Hawke lights up, easily distracted. “She just got back to campus and she sent me a picture of her new building. She's there early doing research. Do you want to see?”

Isabela glances at the screen, less interested in the picture than in the notion of Hawke as a sister. “She must be smart.”

“She is,” Hawke says, her smile wide and proud. “She's a genius, she's going to change the world someday. I'm sending her to school.”

Isabela raises a brow. “What? You're paying her tuition?”

“Yeah—well, not all of it. Some. She gets some scholarship money too, some financial aid. But not enough, so that's why I dropped out,” she explains, scrolling through her phone, “after my dad died. So my brother and sister could go where they wanted. They've always known exactly what they wanted to do and I've never had any idea, so it made sense.”

She holds the phone out. This time the picture is of a boy in a uniform who looks like a serious, square-jawed version of Hawke, minus those blue eyes and that eternal smile. Isabela sucks in air. “Your brother?”

“Carver, Beth's twin. He's at the Naval Academy.” She shrugs. “They were just applying to schools when Dad died and I didn't want them to feel like they had to choose something convenient instead of what they really wanted. Carver doesn't have any tuition, but Beth would have needed loans without me. I didn't want that.”

“God,” Isabela says. She shakes her head. “You're a hell of a sister.”

“Well,” Hawke says, and she shoots Isabela a grin, “I had just declared a Studio Art major, so I'd probably still be here serving beer even with a degree. No great loss, right?”

“You're an artist?” Isabela leans in, more interested in that than sisters and brothers.

“No. I don't know.” Hawke pushes her hair off her forehead; it sticks like that, poking out at all angles. “I mean, I wanted to be. But I wasn't an artist. I was just some kid failing my art history classes.”

“What sort of art?”

“I don't know, I don't really do anything anymore. I liked to paint. I mean, I still do. Just different.” She looks embarrassed, uncertain; she gives a half-shrug. “I don't mind. I'm happy being here. Beth's studying biochemistry, which might as well be magic to me. Carver's doing some kind of engineering. They're really impressive.”

But Isabela's not really listening; she's too busy being absolutely entranced by the concept of Hawke as an artist. She thinks about all the paint-stained t-shirts she's seen Hawke in, and she thinks about the serious reverence with which Hawke approaches every drink, and she imagines it magnified a thousand times across a canvas. “Well, I think art's more interesting than engineering.” She reaches out, touches Hawke's hand. “You should show me someday.”

“It's not any good,” Hawke says. She pauses. “Maybe someday.”

Isabela offers her an out. “So, you're putting your sister through Yale off bartending half a week? Are you sure that's not an elaborate story to get me to tip better?”

Hawke brightens. “No! I promise it's true.” She laughs. “Varric used to be able to give me more shifts here, but I think business has been down. So I work anywhere I can get a few hours. Delivered pizzas before I sold my car. Waited tables for a while.”

“You're joking.”

“I'm not! Would I lie to you?”

Isabela considers that. Probably not, she thinks. She's not sure Hawke would have it in her to manage even a half-truth. “You waited tables and you can't go an hour without dropping at least three glasses?”

“Well, I didn't last long at that. What do you do?” Hawke asks. “Like, for a living.”

“Um,” Isabela says, rather eloquently. She considers the question. “Nothing interesting.”

“Ah, top secret.” Hawke nods. “Don't say another word. Blink twice if it involves aliens.”

Hawke doesn't press, doesn't cajole. She always takes Isabela's word. She never demands more. Sometimes Isabela wishes she would, just so she might finally have a reason to distrust her. But Hawke never does, and so Isabela just laughs. “How'd you know?”

“I'm observant,” Hawke says. She taps the side of her head. “Eagle-eyed.”

“Hawk-eyed. You're killing me. How can you miss something like that?”

Hawke grins. “Eyes of a hawk, brain of a particularly dumb ostrich.”

“Goose,” Isabela tells her. “You're a goose. Persistent and gangly, squawky laugh.”

Oddly enough, Hawke looks deeply flattered. She puffs up (a bit like a goose, Isabela thinks) and smiles. “But I'm such a charming goose.”

Before Isabela can agree, Aveline's voice interrupts them, and Isabela twists to see a familiar scowl plastered on the face of the World's Most Irritating Bouncer. “Hawke! Varric needs you back.”

“Ah, shit.” Hawke runs a hand through her hair, which does nothing to neaten it. She touches Isabela's arm and smiles. “Find me later for that joke I owe you.”

Before Isabela has a chance to respond, Hawke's retreating back into the bar, leaving Aveline and Isabela to eye each other distrustfully. 

Isabela speaks first. “You know, I don't think Varric said he needs her back.”

Aveline crosses her arms and thrusts her chin out in a way that Isabela can only take as a challenge. “We're swamped tonight.”

“Is it just your face, or is there a reason you look all sour every time you see me with Hawke? I had nearly started to like you there for a minute.”

“Hawke's my friend.” She shakes her head. “I don't have anything against you, Isabela. You're a good customer. But don't think you can mess around with Hawke like you do with everyone else.”

“I'm not _messing around_ ,” Isabela says, suddenly bristling with indignation. “I haven't laid a finger on her. Is that what this is about? Get your mind out of the gutter, big girl.”

“Moral advice from our resident slut, is that it?”

Aveline says it with more of a bite than their usual back and forth; Isabela grits her teeth and lights another cigarette. Something to keep her hands occupied, to keep her from starting a fight she might not win. “I'm not the one who saw two people chatting and turned it into a sexual fantasy.” She blows smoke at Aveline's face and lifts her voice into cloying sweetness. “If you're so jealous, all you have to do is ask. I'll say no, of course, but I wouldn't mind hearing you beg for—”

“Knock it off,” Aveline snaps. Her glare is enough to make most grown men cower; Isabela only stands up straighter and matches her glare. “All I'm saying is Hawke's not just someone you can use and throw away. Not while I'm around.”

“I've been making conversation with Varric for years and you've never once told me not to slut it up with him.” She sneers out Aveline's word of choice, and it burns its way up her throat. She wants to spit it back into Aveline's face—wants to spit it out and never hear it again.

Aveline takes a step closer, and Isabela's reminded just how imposing Aveline actually is: a good foot taller than her, with muscles in places Isabela wasn't sure there could even _be_ muscles. “Varric doesn't give you the moony infatuated stare Hawke does. And I know Varric can handle himself.”

Isabela inhales, sharp and irritated. She hasn't noticed any moony staring; in fact, she hasn't noticed anything like that, not since the first glimmer of desire in Hawke's eyes when they'd met. Instead Hawke's either oblivious or disinterested, and her stupid little quip tonight about flirting is the only ounce of satisfaction Isabela's gotten from her all summer. Isabela's been the one watching Hawke, waiting for something to happen for weeks and weeks, with nothing to show for it.

But she's not about to tell Aveline a word of that. “Hawke can take care of herself, too.” Isabela drops her cigarette and grinds it out with her heel. She shoves past Aveline on her way into the bar. “So maybe consider fucking off.”

Aveline calls after her on her way inside, sounding almost apologetic, but Isabela doesn't turn around. She's not usually the defensive type, but Aveline rubs her the wrong way lately. She's not doing anything wrong with Hawke—nothing more than talking. There's nothing wrong with a bit of lust on the side. And maybe Hawke is sweet and warm and funny and maybe Isabela likes Hawke's company just as much as she likes her lopsided smile and her muscles in her t-shirts. But that's all part and parcel of lust, and that's all it is.

Back in the bar, Merrill is in Isabela's usual seat, and for a moment Isabela is taken aback; she's there so often, so religiously, that it's been ages since she's seen anyone else sitting in that spot. But when Merrill turns around with that cheek-splitting smile, the sight is a little easier to bear.

“Isabela! Hawke said you were here!”

“Here I am.” Isabela steps up to the bar, squeezing between Merrill and the stranger on the other stool. “Aren't you going to miss your gardening club, Kitten?”

Merrill instantly looks forlorn. “Oh. It was canceled tonight. No one could make it.”

“Who's in this club exactly?”

“Vladlena—my landlady. Fenris, sometimes. Me. Hawke came once but she didn't take it very seriously and everyone voted not to have her back.”

Isabela doesn't think she's ever heard anything better than that in her entire life than Merrill and her landlady discussing whether or not Hawke deserved to come to midnight gardening. “Fenris really comes?”

“Oh yes! He's a founding member. His plants are the very happiest.”

“You're wonderful, Merrill, d'you know that?”

“I know,” Merrill agrees. “I have a question for you.”

“Ask it.”

“When were you born?”

Isabela blinks. “Excuse me?”

“The day and the time, please,” Merrill says, like it's obvious. “If you know the time, that is. That's best. But you can guess if you need to.”

“Why?” Isabela asks, already dreading the answer.

“So I can get your chart, of course! I already know you're a Gemini, but I need the rest.”

“What? How do you know that?”

Merrill shrugs her narrow shoulders. She looks completely unsurprised. “I had a feeling. Do you need a pen? You can write it down on a napkin for me, if you'd like.”

It doesn't occur to Isabela to say no. That's just how Merrill is—it's not so easy to say no. And so she takes the pen and the napkin and does her best to answer Merrill's demands.

“Location, too,” Merrill chirps. “And your phone number.”

Isabela glances up. “Phone number?”

“In case I ever need to talk to you,” Merrill explains. Isabela doesn't know how to argue with that reasoning.

Isabela's nearly waiting for Merrill to ask for a credit card number. But she doesn't, and Isabela passes her the napkin.

Merrill examines the napkin, nods, and tucks it away in her bag. “What's California like?”

“Shitty,” Isabela says. “The part I'm from.”

“Is that why you're here?”

Isabela opens her mouth and closes it again. She lets out a breath. “I'm here for lots of reasons, Kitten. All of this is between us, isn't it?”

Merrill looks confused. “Was that a secret?”

“No, I just—I like to maintain an air of mystery.” She smiles. “So what are you going to do with this, hm? Unveil the meaning of life to me?”

“No,” Merrill says. She props her head on her hands and gives Isabela a long, inquisitive look. “That bit's still up to you.”

“You think you'll learn something about me?” Isabela asks. _Good luck_ , she thinks.

Merrill smiles, wide and easy. “It's nice to know things about your friends, don't you think? Especially at the very start of a friendship. I'm so looking forward to being your friend.”

Isabela doesn't bother asking if Merrill really, truly believes in any of this; maybe it's better not to know. But she's had enough magic for one lifetime. Isabela's palms itch with the memory of calloused brown fingers tight around hers, the crackly memory of her mother's voice, the cold eyes of the saints up on the walls, a painted pink nail digging along the lines of her hands— _you're in for big trouble, mija, and there's nothing you can do about it._

When Merrill leaves for the bathroom, Isabela folds and unfolds her hands in her lap, stares down at palms full of lines as unrecognizable to her as a foreign language, and can't help but wonder what on earth she's doing here, giving secrets away to strangers and waiting weeks to see the same bartender. In for big trouble, she thinks.

“Isabela! Long time no see.”

Big, big trouble. But when she looks up to see Hawke, all tousled hair and lightning eyes and only-just-buried laughter, Isabela forgets about all the rest. She smiles. “It's been, what, a whole fifteen minutes? Did you get sick of doing your job already?”

“This is my job.” Hawke leans forward on the bar in that way that makes her biceps stand out in sharp relief against the frayed sleeves of her shirt, the way that always makes Isabela want to lean forward too and whisper a whole host of dirty propositions in Hawke's ear. But she doesn't, of course, and Hawke goes on: “Can I get you another drink? Or a joke? I think I still owe you a joke.”

“Both, please.”

“Why do seagulls live by the sea?”

“You tell me.”

“If they lived by the bay, they'd be bagels.”

Isabela's started groaning before Hawke even finishes the joke, but that preemptive resistance doesn't do her any good at all—the groan just makes Hawke laugh louder, and once Hawke starts laughing, Isabela can't help herself. “You're terrible,” she says, not meaning a single word of it. “Absolutely terrible.”

Hawke just smiles. “You're stunning when you laugh, you know. It's why you've got me spending late nights with joke books.”

The words thud into Isabela's chest one-by-one, so unexpected that she hardly knows what to make of it. Isn't that just like Hawke? To say nothing, not a single word, for weeks and weeks, until Isabela's starting to think she imagined everything—and then say something so, so... maddening. So casual, like that sort of sickening-sweet bullshit just pops into Hawke's head at a moment's notice. Isabela's sure Hawke's never given a compliment that wasn't at least a bit ridiculous before.

Isabela takes a sip of her drink, just long enough to regain her footing, and rewards Hawke with a smile. “That's awfully nice of you. What are you trying to get out of it? Something special, maybe?”

For a moment, she thinks Hawke might take the chance Isabela's been all but shoving at her for weeks; her heart races just a little faster at the thought, her legs ache ever-so-slightly. But Hawke puts on that same sweet, exhausting smile. “Nothing. I just wanted to let you know.”

Before Isabela has time to drop her head down to the bar and scream into the wood, Merrill pops back up at her elbow.

“Hi! What are you two talking about?”

Hawke, never content to not drive Isabela absolutely out of her mind, beams a hello at Merrill. “I was just telling Isabela that I think she's gorgeous.”

“Oh! She is. You are.” Merrill nods earnestly in Isabela's direction. “You're the prettiest person I think I've ever met. You're vibrant.”

It's sweet and nauseating. Isabela just grits a smile and hopes that's enough of an answer. But of course, with Hawke and Merrill, it never is.

Hawke undoubtedly has a job she should be doing. But instead she wipes at the same spot of the bar with her rag and chatters away: “So are you two friends now? I walk away for a few minutes and now Merrill's writing love sonnets on napkins—”

“Oh, I think we are! We are friends, aren't we? Nearly friends.” Merrill looks at Isabela, all alight, her big forest eyes warm with hope and affection and all sorts of things Isabela doesn't know how to respond to.

Friends is... not what she was looking for here. That comes with expectations. Obligations. All the things she doesn't want anything to do with. She glances up at Hawke, whose stare is as expectant as Merrill's, and tries to imagine being friends with either of them. Maybe she already is.

She swallows. “We're almost there, aren't we, Kitten? Listen, it's been fun, but it's getting late. I think it's time for me to get out of here.”

“So soon?” Merrill asks.

“Have a good night,” Hawke says before she has to answer Merrill, with no question at all. Like Isabela could possibly have a good night now, leaving the bar with Hawke's steady voice ringing in her ears.

She pecks Merrill's cheek, warm enough to burn her lips, and pushes her way across the room and out the door, feeling Hawke's sharp eyes on her all the while. She finds what she's looking for in the next bar on the next street, and she lets him spend the night buying her enough drinks that she can thoroughly tune out his voice.

When at last they step out of the bar and onto the sidewalk, she can see him more clearly. With a flash of horror, she realizes that his eyes are only a shade away from Hawke's, the color without the spark. And then he takes another step and she realizes it was just the neon light of the bar sign reflecting. His eyes are brown. She lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding.

“Hey,” he starts, and she cuts him off, pressing close to him.

“Listen, sweetheart, let's not have a conversation. I’ve heard you talk enough for one night.”

She doesn't want to be friends. She doesn't want to know his favorite color, his favorite food, the songs on the jukebox that make him hum. She wants to touch him in the cab, leave her fingerprints all over him, wants her body to ache until there's no room in her head for another thought. She just wants it all to be easy. Just once.

That's not so much to ask for, she thinks.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's nsfw! i won't warn every time because spoilers so you may want to stop here if that's not your thing (sorry!), about half of the remaining chapters will have some level of nsfw content.

v. august 11

On August 1st, the world ended not with a whimper but a bang.

Well, the world carried on—it’s hot enough in the city that things _feel_ nearly apocalyptic, but there’s not enough mercy in the universe for the world to actually end and save them all from the heatwave. Still, there had at least been a bang: first a wheeze, and then a stuttering groan, and then the Hanged Man’s air conditioning unit gave one dying gunshot cough as Varric disappeared behind a cloud of musty smoke, wrench in one hand and glass of whiskey in the other.

“Did you fix it?” Hawke had teased, a safe three steps away from the last dusty gasp of the air conditioning. The tragedy hadn’t hit yet; she was too busy trying to contain the inevitable amusement that accompanies an hour spent watching your boss plead with a chunk of metal to _rage, rage against the dying of the light._

“You think it’s funny now,” Varric had warned, staggering back. “It won’t be funny when we can’t afford a new one.”

Like usual, it hadn't taken long to prove Varric right. One final whack with the wrench made no difference, and just a day later, he was showing Hawke the numbers: they couldn’t afford to replace it, and anyway, they couldn’t justify it, not with summer nearly over. And three days after that, they’d had a grand total of twelve customers—a few friends, a few old drunks who'd showed up already pickled enough to not notice the heat. Hawke had scribbled numbers on a napkin, trying to figure out the odds of being able to pay her rent this month, while Varric had taped a  _closed til further notice_ sign up on the door.

“We’re fucked, Hawke,” he’d sighed, sounding like he was talking about a lot more than the air conditioning. “Big time.”

Hawke had swallowed hard, frowned at the numbers on her napkin, and pretended not to hear him.

Now, more than a week later, they’re still fucked, and the bar’s still closed. The only difference is that Varric has stopped talking about it—maybe because he can’t bear to, or maybe because Merrill’s made it her life’s mission to make him think about anything else in the world. It’s been a busy week of brunches (coffee and scrambled eggs for Hawke, always running the numbers in her head) and lunches (“I’ll just get a drink, I already ate”) and extremely obscure themed celebrations of nothing in particular.

The greatest distraction of all, however, comes from Aveline. Clearing her throat over coffee one morning, she makes the announcement: there’s someone she’d like them all to meet, and could he join them tomorrow night for a drink? Nothing big, just a quiet little get-together—

Which is, of course, the moment where everyone jumps in and starts gleefully shouting over Aveline with whoops of delight and rapid-fire plans, until the quiet little get-together has turned into an indisputable party. Merrill will host since she’s got the most space, Varric will bring enough alcohol to drown the Roman Empire, and Hawke, Anders, and Fenris will pool together pocket change and minimum wage to keep everyone supplied with pizza. And Aveline—well, Aveline will bring her mystery man, and what better gift could she possibly give them?

“This is going to be the most important night in all of human history,” Hawke declares to cheers from everyone except Aveline, who just groans and drops her head into her hands.

"Just be respectful," she says. "That's all I ask."

At that, Varric nearly chokes on his coffee.

Hawke has big plans to make it to the party on time, or at least only fashionably late instead of catastrophically late. This is an important night—and she'd like to be waiting at the door when Aveline strolls in with Sideburns, ready with a thousand stern paternal questions about how this fellow intends to treat Aveline. Or how he's been treating her, Hawke supposes; the first question ought to be how long Aveline's been carrying on a secret love affair, which is not a phrase Hawke ever imagined associating with Aveline. It's all really too good to be true.

Still, no amount of enthusiasm has ever done anything to make Hawke a more timely individual, and by the time she finishes a hasty jog from the subway to Merrill's building, the sounds of laughter and music already spill from bright windows to the street. She pauses on the steps, straightens up (in a hopeless attempt to look somewhat presentable, given a heatwave-inspired outfit of a sweaty t-shirt and extremely uncool cut-off shorts), and rings the bell. Almost before the chime concludes, Merrill flings the door open and pulls Hawke into a hug.

"You made it!" Pushing up all the way on her tiptoes, Merrill leans in to whisper in Hawke's ear: "He's  _fantastic_. Don't worry, Varric's been giving him a terribly hard time."

Before Hawke has time to say anything important like _alright but c_ _an we discuss his sideburns for just a minute,_ Merrill whisks her into the living room, announcing the newest guest like she’s being presented at court: “Hawke has arrived!”

Everyone waves or shouts from their seat—except the one new face, Aveline’s cop with the big, nervous smile, who positively dwarfs the tiny pink armchair Merrill has seated him in. He leaps up, crosses the room in a few long strides, and sticks one enormous hand out. 

“Donnic Hendyr,” he declares. “Pleasure to meet you at last, Hawke. Aveline tells me great things about you.”

Hawke grins and grabs his hand, looking him up and down. He looks out of place in his polo and khakis, like he'd wandered into their party by mistake on his way to the golf course. Aveline _would_ go and find herself the most boring man in the city. “Officer Hendyr! She's told me almost nothing about you.”

“Just Donnic, please.” He smiles, awkward. “I'm sure we'll get the chance to know each other better."

"Count on it," Hawke says. "Now that we're all here, you're really in for an interrogation."

"Are we not waiting on Isabela?"

Hawke opens her mouth, closes it, and blinks at him, not quite sure she's heard that right. "What?"

Aveline appears at his side in a flash and grabs his arm so tight it has to hurt: “Donnic!”

He looks bewildered, frowning at Aveline. “That’s her name, isn’t it? Isabela?” He turns back to Hawke. “I’ve heard lots about the two of you, I figured you'd come together.”

Aveline makes a strangled sort of noise at that; this time, Hawke's the one coming to her rescue. “Oh, ha. No. We're friends. But we're not—I mean, we're not, like, a couple. I don’t know what Aveline’s said, but—”

“Nothing,” Aveline interrupts. "I haven't said anything."

"Well," Donnic begins, looking doubtful, but Aveline elbows him in the ribs.

“Are you talking about Isabela?” Merrill pipes up from across the room. Hawke wonders what gave them away: Aveline's blush, her own, or each of them with a foot stuck in their mouths.

“Why?” Aveline asks, appearing eager to foist the responsibility of having a conversation off on someone else.

Merrill lights up. “She's dropping by later!”

Aveline and Hawke exchange a glance. “What?”

“I called her this afternoon,” Merrill explains. “She promised she'd stop by if she could.”

"What?" Hawke repeats. "No.  _What_?" 

Aveline snorts and gives Donnic a pointed look. “Don't count on meeting her.” And then she elbows him again, gentler this time: "And stop asking questions. It makes you look weird, not thoughtful."

Hawke can't decide what's stranger: the fact that Merrill has Isabela's phone number, a feat which Hawke would have imagined impossible, or the fact that Isabela agreed to come to this party. Or—sort of agreed. Maybe agreed. It’s so strange that, somehow, she forgets all about it, distracted by beer and pizza and teasing Aveline and Donnic as relentlessly as she can. 

And so, when the buzzer rings, Hawke doesn't notice—she's too busy shouting at Varric, laughing, both of them talking over each other at the top of their lungs in a madcap race to see who can finish telling the story first. She doesn't notice until, one at a time, the whole room quiets; Aveline gets wide-eyed and nudges Donnic, Anders and Fenris break off in the middle of some heated argument off to the side, and finally Hawke looks up and over to the door.

The door is open and Merrill's standing there, chattering away, wholly absorbed in welcoming the guest. Isabela stands neatly framed by the doorway, a bottle of wine in her hands, the faintest hint of embarrassment in her eyes. She's looking right over Merrill, all around the room, and then her stare lands on Hawke.

Only when their eyes meet and relief dawns across Isabela's face does it hit Hawke that Isabela is actually  _there._  Outside of the bar, outside of that entire world, and here in the entryway of Merrill's apartment. When Hawke smiles, Isabela's face brightens to match.

Merrill breaks off, seemingly aware that Isabela's not paying her much attention. She turns around to face the room. “Isabela's here,” she declares, which is, of course, not news at all to a roomful of people staring right at Isabela.

Isabela clears her throat. “Hi,” she says. She lifts the bottle, discomfort and amusement both written across her face. “Merrill told me it was a dinner party. I'd have worn flats and brought beer if I knew what I was getting myself into.”

Varric is the first to laugh, but it's not long before the others join in. Donnic jumps up and introduces himself before Aveline tugs him away; Anders and Fenris both greet Isabela with a handshake and a big smile; and within another minute, everyone has picked right back up where they left off, like there's nothing unusual at all about Isabela's presence—like it's not the strangest thing to ever happen in Hawke's entire life.

Everything else forgotten, Hawke extracts herself from her seat and makes her way across the room. “C'mon,” she says, meeting Isabela's eyes. “We'll put that bottle away and I'll get you a drink and some pizza.”

The five second walk to the kitchen isn’t nearly long enough for Hawke to fit her mind around any of this, around the very fact that Isabela exists outside of the world of the Hanged Man. Or the fact that Merrill has Isabela’s phone number. It's all too weird, and she does the only thing she knows how to do: she takes two beers from the fridge, cracks them open, and passes one to Isabela.

Isabela smiles. "My favorite bartender," she says, lifting the bottle to tap it against Hawke's. "It's good to see you, sweet thing. I've missed seeing you with the bar closed."

Hawke looks at her, trying and failing to wrap her head around the image of Isabela here in Merrill's tidy yellow kitchen. “What are you doing here?”

“I don't know.” Isabela laughs, shakes her head, casts a glance up to the ceiling. “Merrill  _called_ me. Like, on the phone. How was I supposed to say no with her hanging on for an answer?”

Hawke grins at that. “Yeah. That's fair. Sometimes I think we're all only friends because we can't say no to Merrill.”

Isabela laughs again. She takes a sip. “I was so relieved to see you here,” she says, quieter. “I wasn't sure—if you weren't here, I might have walked right back out.”

Hawke takes a breath. “Why?”

“Can you picture it? Merrill, Aveline, and me sitting around making conversation?” She shakes her head. “You're the only one I know, really. I mean—I've met the boys, and there's Varric, but it's not like I'm friends with everyone.”

Hawke smiles. When she takes half a step closer, Isabela seems to move closer, too. “But everyone here is half-convinced you're our friend already. You're at the bar so often you might as well be.”

Isabela looks up at the ceiling, then back to Hawke. “I was thinking about it, and I really would like to be friends with everyone, which I suppose is why I'm here. But I don't want it to be strange."

“Why would it be strange?”

This time, Isabela takes a long, long swig of her drink. And this time, Hawke's certain that Isabela's moving closer. “Well, are you and I friends?”

“What else would we be?” Hawke asks. Isabela's close enough now that breathing feels impossible, close enough for Hawke to count the flecks of gold in her eyes, close enough to see her own melted reflection in the stud beneath Isabela's lip. 

“We could be anything,” Isabela says. She sets her beer on the counter and reaches out, her fingertips dancing over Hawke's wrist and up her arm. “But you're not giving me much to go on, sweetness. So here I am, trying something different. Is it working?”

Hawke swallows hard. She looks up, above Isabela's head and out the door; nobody in the other room seems to be paying any attention to what's happening in the kitchen. “What do you want?”

“Hawke, if you haven't figured that out—”

“No, I mean—what—what do you want us to be? Friends?”

Isabela pauses, but only for a second. She takes another step forward until their hips bump, forcing Hawke back against the counter. This time, Isabela's fingers close around Hawke's wrist and the smile that spreads across her face is enough to make Hawke dizzy. “Ex-lovers,” she quips.

Hawke lets out a breathless half-laugh. Isabela's fingers are steadily burning a brand into her skin. “We're not there yet, are we?”

“Not yet.”

“Why now?”

“Why not?” Isabela shrugs. “Because I've missed seeing you. Because I thought I was coming to a dinner party and had to drink a bottle of wine just to make it out the door. And here you are, and here I am.”

“What does this mean about whether or not we're friends?”

“Not a thing unless you want it to, sweet thing. I've got more ex-lovers for friends than I know what to do with.”

“What about current lovers?”

“Obviously those too,” Isabela agrees. “But only the really cute ones.”

 Hawke smiles. "That's me, then," she says. "I can do really cute."

“I'm sure you can. The only rule is that you can't fall in love with me,” Isabela warns, laughter on her lips, like it's so impossible that it can't be anything but a joke. Like she really can't fathom it. “Despite my many, many charms.”

“I promise I won't,” Hawke says unthinkingly—thinking so little, really, that she means it.

Isabela looks at her for a long moment; she traces the line of Hawke's jaw, brushes her thumb over Hawke's lips, runs her other hand up her arm and to the back of Hawke's neck. She holds her like that for a moment, cupping Hawke's face, their lips an inch apart, Hawke's heart pounding and her stomach twisting. Hawke is agonizing, achingly aware of every fingertip, every little dart of Isabela's eyes. Carefully, she reaches out, her own hands just grazing Isabela's waist—

Then Isabela steps away, her grin positively wicked. "We'd better go see everyone else. I hate to be unfriendly."

Hawke slumps against the counter, her breathing just a little shaky, and watches Isabela make her way into the living room—the sway of her hips, the echo of her laugh, the way she sits right down on Merrill's sofa like she belongs there. With a long exhalation, she runs her hands through her hair and follows. It's not like she can't play the waiting game, she thinks; that's _her_ game. But now they're playing by Isabela's rules, and that's something different.

When she sits down on the couch beside Isabela—finally beside her, no bar in between—a hand on her leg is enough to make her jump and a smile is enough to make her heart stutter again. Hawke swallows, shifts, and tries not to forget to breathe when their knees bump. Not the night she'd imagined.

Luckily, with everyone at last gathered together, the perfect distraction is only a moment away. “Who's up for a round of Wicked Grace?” Varric asks. Aveline groans, but it's drowned out by Hawke's cheer.

Isabela nudges her. “What's Wicked Grace?”

Varric rubs his hands together, looking gleeful. “Hawke, you explain the rules to Isabela and Donnic. The rest of us will set it up.”

“Okay. So. We play with a deck of cards,” Hawke explains, “and each suit is a different category of a challenge. So you're on a two person team and the team that completes the most challenges wins. If your team wins a challenge, everyone else has to drink. If you fail, you have to drink, and if you're caught cheating, you have to chug your drink. If you ask any questions, you have to drink. If you finish a drink, you have to drink. If you're caught with an empty drink, you have to chug a drink. If you touch lava, you have to drink. If you curse, you drink. There's three rounds, each one twenty minutes: wine, beer, and liquor. You have to win two out of three rounds to defeat the King. If no one does, you start over.”

“Right,” Isabela says. “I understand none of that, except the part where we all get alcohol poisoning and die.”

“Teams?” Varric asks.

Fenris and Anders join together, standing on the far side of the couch. They're always a team: the incessant arguing doesn't seem to dissuade them from teaming up, perhaps because they both take the game extremely seriously. Varric likes to team up with Merrill—he's the inventor of the game and he prides himself on being the best, which means he can keep Merrill from getting too trashed. That leaves Donnic, Aveline, Hawke, and Isabela.

Aveline and Hawke exchange a glance. “Do you want to risk it?” Aveline asks.

Hawke looks at Isabela, then back at Aveline. “Definitely not. It's you and me.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! No fair,” Varric interrupts. “You can't abandon new players.”

Aveline scowls. “It's not fair to be stuck with new players!”

“I'm not afraid,” Isabela declares, hands on her hips.

Donnic clears his throat. “I am.”

Hawke looks at Isabela, but Aveline beats her to it: “I call Isabela.” When Donnic looks utterly betrayed, Aveline only shrugs. “You can't hold your liquor,” she tells him.

Isabela lifts her brows. “I thought you didn't want anything to do with me, big girl.”

Aveline, looking even more embarrassed than she’s looked all night, shrugs. “I didn’t take you for someone who’d come to this sort of party. I was wrong about that much, wasn’t I?”

“I wouldn't worry about it. I’m sure you’re wrong all the time.”

Aveline grunts. “Shut up.”

For Aveline, it sounds something like an apology, and Hawke has to take a drink to hide a delighted grin. Weeks and weeks of Aveline telling anyone who’d listen that Isabela was no good for Hawke or for the bar, their typical back-and-forth getting sharper before suddenly turning into an icy silence only a few weeks ago—and here they are, teammates. Best of all, Hawke gets to watch Officer Sideburns get drunk off his ass.

Like always, it doesn't take long for the game to descend into chaos. Donnic doesn't make for a bad teammate—when Varric draws the three of spades and demands to know who was the greatest Batman of all time, Donnic is the first to roar out Keaton, and when Aveline dryly announces that Jessie is a friend, Donnic doesn't miss a beat before howling the chorus. His off-key croon speaks more to what a lightweight he is than to an understanding of the game's rules, but it works out for him well enough. Anders and Fenris correctly answer the best bear (polar, obviously). It's Aveline who can list every episode of  _Xena_ where she dies, Varric who can name the most professional wrestlers, and Isabela—to Hawke's immeasurable delight—who does the best impression of Cher.

In the second round, Anders fits the most grapes in his mouth, Varric unflinchingly endures the shot of Tabasco, Hawke successfully stands on her hands on the coffee table, and Isabela has to drink a record-setting nine times for cursing. But the penalties don't stop Isabela and Aveline—in fact, by the third round, they're unstoppable. Every time they do a count-off, Aveline and Isabela end up holding the same numbers; when Aveline has to cross the room without touching the floor with Isabela clinging to her shoulders, she makes it look easy. Donnic's the first to go green and flee to the bathroom, but Anders doesn't make it much longer. Merrill, their long-suffering hostess, chases after them to ensure no one dies in her bathroom. Hawke and Fenris join forces just in time for the timer to go off right as Aveline and Isabela reach the center of the room.

“The King ascends!” Varric shouts.

“All hail the King!” the others echo.

Varric, Hawke, and Fenris slam a fist into their other hand, shouting as one: “Rock, paper, scissors, Henry the Fourth!”

“Louis the Eighth,” Aveline counters.

The losers confer. “Philip the Second.”

(Isabela, too drunk now to keep her voice to a whisper, can be heard wailing  _what does any of this mean_ throughout the process.)

Fenris and Hawke carry Varric like a battering ram into the kitchen, then emerge with Varric clutching an unlabeled bottle. “A shot each without barfing and you win,” Varric declares.

“What is that?” Isabela asks.

“The King,” Aveline says, brow knitted grimly, looking like a soldier ready for death. Isabela looks at Hawke with raised brows; Hawke just grins back.

Aveline gags on the shot but finishes it; Isabela takes it like a true professional. The three losers erupt in cheers, and Aveline—as drunk as Hawke has ever seen her—turns to lift Isabela off her feet in a bear hug. Isabela's just drunk enough to howl with laughter and hug her back.

“I don't know what we did, but we did it, big girl!”

“You're not bad,” Aveline shouts in a voice that is undoubtedly notmeant to be a shout. “You're not bad at all! Couldn't ask for a better tramp on my team!”

“Anything for you, you frigid prude!”

Varric blinks at them. His shirt's unbuttoned halfway down his chest, all his hair has escaped from its tie, and he looks thoroughly shell-shocked. He elbows Hawke. “What's happening here?”

Hawke scratches her head. “I think—they're friends now?”

“Or drunk enemies,” Fenris offers. With Aveline still clapping Isabela on the back and shouting about displays of strength and brilliance, both explanations seem equally valid.

Varric grabs Hawke by the elbow, pulling her down close to whisper in her ear. “I'm only sayin' this because I'm drunk as a skunk, but I might have been wrong about you and Isabela. It works, having her here. Better than I thought.”

Hawke sways unsteadily on her feet; she grips his shoulder for some sort of balance. “I don't want to fuck it up,” she whispers, wide-eyed and serious. She feels certain that if there's any answer to any of this, Varric must know it—must have some kind of secret.

“Then don't catch feelings. Or if you do, don't say a word.” Varric jabs a finger into her chest. “Don't fuck the friendship part up for the rest of us. We need her for even teams now.”

“No feelings,” Hawke says. It's more repetition than agreement, but Varric nods sagely, too wasted to determine any difference between the two.

Aveline has stumbled away from Isabela and off towards the bathroom now, their truce left precarious, and Isabela makes her way towards Hawke, Varric, and Fenris. “Now what?” she asks.

“I’m gonna barf myself stupid and then crash on the couch,” Varric says. He gestures towards the bathroom hallway with a thumb. “We won’t see any of those suckers for a while.”

“Only the drunkards prevail,” Fenris says. He drops onto the couch and picks up a pizza crust, lifting it in a toast to the other three.

“Well,” Isabela says, turning her gaze on Hawke, “if there’s nothing else planned, it might be time for me to get out of here.” Her voice is slow, warm and languid, and it makes Hawke shiver.

“D’you want to go home?” Hawke asks her, which isn’t exactly what she meant to say—but it’s all she can get out. Inanely, she adds: “I could walk you home.”

“I'm going to call a cab, I'm too far to walk.” Isabela fumbles with her phone, squinting down at the screen with a particular drunken intensity. And then she looks up, fixing that same intense stare on Hawke. “Come outside with me, sweet thing.”

Hawke's nothing if not predictable. She follows so quickly that she nearly falls right back down.

Outside, Isabela leans back against the brick of the building, and Hawke leans into her, their bodies coming together with all the gravity they've been ignoring for weeks. Isabela laughs, loud and warm and at nothing in particular.

“Here,” she declares, pressing a lighter into Hawke's hands and sticking a cigarette between her own lips. “You've got to do it for me. I'm so unsteady I think I might set my face on fire and not even notice.”

Hawke treats the task as carefully as if she were disarming a bomb. When the cigarette is successfully lit, Isabela seems to sag with relief; she's careful to blow the smoke away from Hawke, and they both watch the cloud dissipate into the clear summer night.

Isabela pins her with a serious stare. “Will you still kiss me?” she asks, voice low and intent. “Even if I taste like smoke?”

That's all it takes for Hawke to forget how to formulate sentences, to forget every word she's ever known. She just nods, takes a shaky breath, and then nods again.

Later, alone in her bed with the ceiling swimming above her, Hawke won’t be able to remember the moments before—the way they fell together like two magnets, slow and then sudden, stepping on each other’s toes and laughing with delight right on the edge of delirium. But she’ll remember the kiss—the way the world catches fire around them, the soft heat of Isabela’s lips parting against hers and the cool brush of Isabela’s fingertips over her neck and down her arms, the precise unsteady rhythm of her heart trying to punch out of her chest, the way she can  _feel_ the kiss from her ears to her ankles. She'll remember all of it, even after, when she'd rather forget. Every last instant.

When they pull apart, both too drunk to manage the art of kissing and breathing, Hawke looks at Isabela like she’s never seen her before. “Tell me we get to do this again.”

“Oh, sweet thing, any time you’d like. That's what I've been trying to tell you.”

“Just casual?”

Isabela draws back, the faintest wrinkle of consternation between her brows. “What do you think?”

“That's what I want,” Hawke says, quick, “something casual. Nothing that would fuck up being friends.”

“It won't,” Isabela promises. She touches Hawke's face, light as a breath. “We can make that deal. Friends first, extremely gorgeous lovers second.”

Hawke tries to come up with a response, but speaking isn't getting any easier. She leans in, pressing her forehead to Isabela's, closes her eyes and breathes in the smell of smoke and liquor and the spice of her perfume. “Cool,” she manages. And then: “So are we—are we leaving together?”

Isabela laughs and laughs, the loveliest sound Hawke thinks she's ever heard in her whole life. “Oh, Hawke,” she says, “you made me wait too long for that. Now it’s your turn.”

Before Hawke knows it, before she can object or beg or kiss her again or make a total fool of herself there on the sidewalk, Isabela's kissing her cheek, stepping away, and disappearing into a cab.

Hawke's still standing there, more dazed than drunk, when Fenris finds her outside. He looks her over and claps her on the shoulder. “I didn't expect to still see you here. I'm heading home. Coming?”

She nods. They don't live far apart—different ends of the same block, with Hawke’s place first. Somehow they make it there, surviving the walk to the subway and the ride to their neighborhood without any alcohol-fueled disasters, and by the time they're approaching Hawke's apartment, her head has cleared just enough for her to walk by herself. Mostly.

Once upon a time, her building must have been nice; it's old enough that it must have at least been beautiful, before generations of bad weather and bad tenants wore it down. But now it's just the smallest, dirtiest building on the dirtiest block, and Hawke scowls up at it from the street.

Fenris follows her stare and cracks a toothy grin. “Could you find a shittier building if you tried?”

Hawke laughs. “Like your place is any better.”

“Not at all. And I can still hardly afford it with what I'm making.” He spits, shaking his head. “Between rent and tuition, Hawke—but you know how it is, don't you? Hell with all of it.”

“Hell with it,” Hawke agrees. They've had this discussion before: Hawke and Varric are still the only two who know that Fenris works on campus during the day, janitorial work in exchange for shitty wages and a tuition break. She's not quite steady on her feet; when she sways precariously sideways, Fenris grabs her shoulder. She leans into him, and her voice drops to a confessional tone: “This is the last month of my lease. I'm thinking about moving.”

“Really?” He gives her an intent look, one that cuts through the haze of alcohol. They both come to a pause there in the street.

“Really. Why?”

“I’m paying by the month.” Fenris tilts his head. “I don't suppose you'd be interested in a roommate.”

Hawke gets there half a second later. “Oh! Shit! That's not a half-bad idea.”

“It could help solve both our problems. Perhaps we could find somewhere closer to the bar and campus. If nothing else, utilities—”

“Could we afford a two bedroom? I mean, if we want to save money—”

He interrupts like he's planned the whole conversation. “I may have a lead on a space.”

“Let's hear it.”

“I know a fellow trying to rent out a loft. It's an industrial conversion, so it's not pretty, but it's cheap and it's large. There's more than enough room for two, though not so much privacy. But I would make an inoffensive roommate. I think you would, too.”

She laughs. “I'm flattered, Fen.”

“What I mean is—out of all our friends, you would be the best to live with, I think.”

He's right, she thinks. They'd work together. He's quiet, steady, and they're both so busy that they might hardly notice the other was there at all. “Cheap housing for tired debtors in need of haircuts?”

He chuckles. “That's us. What do you think?”

“I think you’re a genius.”

"Go home, then, and think about it." He claps her on the back—half a friendly gesture, half steering her in the direction of her apartment, which she's nearly started to walk right past again. Miraculously, she makes it up the stairs and through her door.

And she does think about it, as she kicks her sneakers into the corner of her dark, lonely apartment; she thinks about splitting rent, talking to someone other than herself, coming home to the lights on and a friendly face. But when Hawke falls asleep, it's not Fenris and some big loft in her dreams. Instead it's Isabela, hands on Hawke's cheeks, lips a breath away.  _Just don't fall in love with me._

vi. august 18 

Isabela has never been a very patient woman. Hawke is officially trying her patience.

The thing about Hawke is—well, there are a lot of things about Hawke. The thing about Hawke is everything. Isabela wouldn't know where to begin. There's the way she always looks like she's been waiting for Isabela, standing up a little taller the moment their eyes meet. Or there’s the way she runs her hand through her hair, the way she laughs with her head thrown back, the way she never seems to stop moving entirely. There’s the way she concentrates on every word Isabela says to her, like every syllable matters, or the way she focuses all her attention on a problem until it’s solved, no matter how small. The way she smiles with her friends, the way she jokes with strangers, the way she treats everyone with more generosity and warmth than Isabela ever thought one body could contain.

So. There are a lot of things about Hawke.

But mostly (mostly, Isabela keeps telling herself) there's this: she's gorgeous. Really, truly, ridiculously gorgeous, all blue eyes and long legs and wicked cheekbones. That’s especially true when she’s still for a moment, her aquiline profile illuminated by bar lights, lips parted and those eyes midnight-dark. But even when Hawke’s dropping glasses and grinning like a loon at some awful joke—even then, Isabela can’t convince herself that Hawke is anything short of stunning.

She's beautiful like a painting, not quite real but dangerously convincing. Isabela sort of wants to wreck her and sort of wants to keep her. Hide her away somewhere, frame her, mount her on the wall, or mount her against the wall—or—or—

Well. The metaphor's run away from her. But you get the idea. That’s the thing about Hawke.

Here's the thing about Isabela, though: she has never spent two months waiting for anything, not once in her entire life. When she knows what she wants, she takes it—and if she doesn't get it, well, then she's on to whatever comes next. It’s simple.

But Hawke, who is either incredibly patient or incredibly dense, has a knack for turning the simple into the needlessly complicated. And now they're two and a half months into this and all they’ve got to show for it is one kiss, which makes Isabela’s stomach hurt with irritation every time she thinks about it for more than half a second. One single stupid kiss.

She’d wanted Hawke that first night in June, wanted her so badly that she’d thrown everything to the wind and marched up to her side of the bar, and she’d been certain that Hawke wanted her, too. Instead all she’d gotten was a night of sweet smiles and terrible jokes. Another month spent flirting with Hawke and—well, maybe the smiles had been a little sweeter, the jokes a little more terrible, but Hawke had still gone blank and bewildered every time Isabela so much as touched her hand. By then, of course, Hawke had nearly ruined everything; she’d made Isabela like her as a person, made them into friends, without having the decency to stop being so lovely, too.

Still, maybe they could have done that. Maybe they could have been friends. But then Hawke had tugged the rug out from under Isabela’s feet again. That was Hawke: so appalling at this entire ‘flirting’ business that the first _you look nice tonight_ had been earth-shattering.

Isabela has been trying to catch up ever since, trying to figure out how to do things at Hawke’s glacial speed, and she’s been doing all the things she’d always thought she’d never do. Like showing up every day of the week, staying later and later every night, and going home to her own bed to think about Hawke. She orders drinks she doesn’t like so Hawke will take longer to make them. She talks to Hawke’s friends for company instead of strangers—it’s not just Merrill now, but Anders and Fenris who always come to say hello when they see her. After a summer of pointed looks, Varric acts like nothing has happened, back to greeting her with a roar and a laugh. And since the party, even Aveline has been nothing but polite.

The party. That’s the other thing Isabela thought she’d never do. She’d justified going by making a deal with herself before she’d walked out of her apartment that night: one way or another, she wasn’t leaving without kissing Hawke. No more waiting. And so she’d made it through the party with a sense of control, of absolute concrete certainty.

Until she kissed Hawke. The kiss was one thing—but the aftershock, that had been unexpected. Isabela had scared herself half to death with racing thoughts; she’d wanted to take Hawke home, wanted to kiss her again and again, and had hardly thought to want anything more than that. So she’d made a hasty retreat and done her best to convince them both that had been her plan all along.

But after the party—after Hawke sobered up, after they had the bar back between them—Hawke hadn't said a word. Still hasn't. Isabela's sick over it, sick over the memory of Hawke's lips against hers, sick over the fact that she's so hung up on a kiss.

It would be one thing if they were friends and actually sleeping together. That, Isabela could fit her mind around. Friends, benefits, done. Nicely compartmentalized. But the unrequited lust is consistently leaving her queasy and frustrated. It's getting harder to separate it from pangs of friendly affection—harder to tell why, exactly, she's always so eager to be around Hawke. She's starting to think that she just can't go on like this: she has to get it out of her system. That's a kiss for you. Dangerous.

Too much thinking, too much waiting, too much Hawke. Isabela’s absolutely sick of all of it. So, tonight, when she walks into the Hanged Man, she has _now or never_  carved into her heart. 

"Aveline," she says at the door, and they exchange sincere smiles, something Isabela is still getting used to. If there's one thing to be said for this agonizing one-kiss-at-a-time pace, it's that Aveline's run out of accusations and they've stumbled into something like friendship instead. Almost like it, anyway.

"I wondered if you'd show up."

"You know I like to keep you on your toes, big girl. Is Hawke here?"

"Like you don't know her schedule." Aveline snorts. "Go on, then, I know she's been waiting to see you."

It’s a busy night at the bar, which Isabela is immensely relieved to see; even after it reopened the other day to lower temperatures, crowds had been small. But not tonight. She makes her way across the crowded floor all the way to the one open seat at the bar.

“Hey, bartender,” she calls down the bar. “What’s a lady got to do to get a drink around here?”

Hawke twists around to greet her with an enormous smile. “Isabela! Hi! How are you?”

“I brought you an early birthday card,” Isabela declares. She digs around in her purse, fingers skimming over endless receipts and tubes of lipstick before she finds it. She lifts the pink envelope, smiling. “It’s all yours for a cocktail.”

Hawke laughs, a short, surprised burst. “No! You didn't! Did you?”

“No, you goose, I brought an empty envelope. Of course I did.” Isabela waves the envelope in front of Hawke’s nose, tugging it away when Hawke reaches for it. “Drink first. Surprise me with something.”

Hawke obliges, but not without another slightly-surprised smile, like she can’t quite believe it really isn’t an empty envelope. If Isabela wasn’t trying so hard not to care too much about that sort of thing, she thinks, Hawke's disbelief might bother her.

To her immense relief, it doesn’t take long for Hawke to present her a tall glass with a flourish and a grin. “This is my signature almost-my-birthday cocktail, invented right this very minute.”

Isabela drops the envelope on the counter and spins it towards Hawke, glad to have it out of her hands and replaced with a drink—ginger and mint and enough bourbon that she briefly forgets to be self-conscious about the card in Hawke’s hands.

Hawke opens the envelope like she’s unfurling a sacred scroll, like she can’t possibly imagine what she might find inside. Isabela sucks air through her teeth and takes an inordinately large sip of her drink, looking over Hawke's shoulder.

“You can’t be beet,” Hawke reads from the front of the card (emblazoned, of course, with a cartoon beet that Isabela's grown to detest after several days spent looking at its horrible grinning face). Then Hawke opens the card and a look of total ecstatic, ridiculous glee spreads across her face. Luckily, Hawke doesn't read it out loud; Isabela has the inside memorized anyway.

_Hawke -_

_Happy birthday! Lettuce celebrate—this pun’s on me, sprout._

_xx Isabela_

Nine words, and two that really count as a free space, and Isabela had still spent half an hour figuring out how to come up with a joke stupid enough to somehow say _I care about you but not in a weird way_. Indulging in Hawke’s terrible sense of humor was the best she could do. 

“This is amazing,” Hawke declares with typical extravagant enthusiasm; the edges of the card crinkle in her hands as she presses it to her chest, and Isabela would smile at her excitement if she wasn’t irritated with herself for picking up on details like that. “I’m going to put it on my fridge when I get home,” Hawke continues, her voice half-laughter in that maybe-joking-maybe-not way, and she turns and places it on the liquor shelf above her, the smiling beet on full display.

“Right, well, don’t let it go to your head or anything.”

Hawke grins. “How’d you even figure out it was my birthday?”

“Merrill put me in the group message.” Isabela smiles and lifts her brows as if to say _isn’t that funny_ , like she hadn’t asked Merrill herself as soon as July rolled into August—like she didn’t have a carefully wrapped package at home waiting for the weekend’s surprise party. Sometimes she hardly recognized herself these days.

“I’m impressed,” Hawke says, with another grin over her shoulder at the card. “It's the only card I've gotten this year. Even my own mother forgot. Let me go take care of those two over there and I’ll be back with another drink for you?”

She says it like a question, but it’s one Isabela is always glad to answer. “Works for me, sweet thing.”

Hawke pauses, looking serious for just an instant before a smile creeps back into her face. “You’re wonderful. See you in a minute.”

Waiting is the worst part—waiting on Hawke to finish wasting her time on everyone else and come back to Isabela’s end of the bar. It’s not that Isabela’s impatient about getting a drink; honestly, if timely service was her primary concern, she’d never have ventured away from Varric. But when Hawke’s busy, it’s even harder not to think about her, and Isabela is tired of thinking about Hawke. She's done too much sitting and waiting this summer. Two and a half months of cheap beer and classic rock and Hawke’s ocean eyes, with no obstacle between them but their own hesitation.

Or the bar itself, if you’d like to get technical. They do have a barrier right between them, which works as an apt metaphor, really, a physical manifestation of two long months. But someday someone has to cross it. Don't they? Maybe?

Or maybe, Isabela thinks, she had better just burn it down.

Hawke steps back into her vision, towel over her shoulder and hair just a little more tousled than before. “Hi again. Can I get you something else?”

Isabela touches the marks in the wood in front of her, tracing along the grain, thinking about bars and barriers and arson. And then, decidedly sick of metaphors, she catches Hawke's hands. “Why don’t you tell me, sweet thing?”

“Well,” Hawke says, going slightly red and looking over her shoulder at the kaleidoscope of bottles on the wall, “the beer selection is as boring as ever, but Varric brought in this amazing—”

“Hawke,” Isabela tries, but Hawke is still talking, going on about whiskey, and normally Isabela would be interested or at least act interested, but right now— “Hawke, you know that's not what I meant.”

Hawke turns around with a question on her lips but she doesn't have time to ask it, because Isabela doesn’t have time to wait another second. She catches Hawke by the collar of her t-shirt and tugs her up against the counter.

Hawke stumbles forward without so much as a gasp; there’s no time for that, not one syllable of surprise, before Isabela has her hands tangled in Hawke’s hair, crushing their mouths together in a kiss. It’s not like the kiss at the party. This time, Isabela’s not yet drunk enough to relinquish her control, and she turns the full force of that control on Hawke.

But the way the ache of longing spreads from her chest down to her toes, an electric rush of pleasure so sharp it stings—that much is the same.

Isabela releases Hawke just long enough to swing herself up to sit on the bar, perching there so she can at last look down at Hawke. She tosses her hair back and adjusts her legs, letting her already-short dress slip up to reveal another inch or two; if she has to make a public scene to get Hawke's attention, then it ought to be a _really_ good scene. “That was your hint. Now try to guess what I want,” she says. "Quickly, now, before someone else does."

Hawke’s not a bad guesser. Oh, she’s still a little wide-eyed, but her eyes are eager now, too, and she catches Isabela by the waist with a sense of purpose that Isabela hadn’t been sure she'd ever get out of Hawke.  _That's more like it,_ Isabela thinks, and she grins and guides Hawke's hands towards her ass instead.

“C’mon, then,” Hawke says, and she pulls Isabela towards her—down onto the wrong side of the bar, and right into Hawke’s arms and another kiss. Someone whistles, someone else whoops, and Isabela laughs against Hawke’s lips.

It's easy at first, like they haven't just spent three months with stomachaches and jumping hearts. All the way to the bathroom, Isabela doesn't have to think about anything other than Hawke’s hands on her hips and Hawke’s lips against hers, the two of them stumbling across the room together like one body. Easy. Just what Isabela’s been waiting for. And she can feel everyone watching them, an audience to remind her: this is public, this is lust. That's it.

And then Hawke releases her for a moment, just long enough to find the doorknob. “After you,” she says, soft and sweet, her voice newly rough.

The things Isabela would do to her, _could_ do to her—

She exhales, catches herself, and grabs Hawke by the hand.

They chart a course around the narrow, dim bathroom. Isabela pushes Hawke against the closed door; Hawke twists Isabela around and lifts her to the counter, their lips at last aligned just right; they kiss long and hard and desperately, their reflections kissing in the mirrors all around them with the same enthusiasm. Hawke holds her own. Her touch is confident as her hands trace every curve of Isabela's body; her kiss is bold and hungry. It's better than Isabela could have hoped, really, after weeks of Hawke blushing and stuttering at every incidental touch. 

But there’s only so much kissing a woman can bear.

“Come on, sweet thing,” Isabela murmurs. "Let's see what else you can do." She slides down from the counter into Hawke's arms, and she pulls Hawke with her into the last uncharted territory left in the bathroom. She locks the stall door behind them with a click.

Hawke's awkwardly, unfairly tall, nearly a head over Isabela even with the help of her heels, and it’s never been as obvious as it is here. A less stubborn woman than Isabela might not be able to make it work—or, with anyone else, Isabela might push them down on their knees and guide their head between her legs before calling it a night. But she's intent on fucking Hawke here, now, in the cramped bathroom of the Hanged Man, fucking her until not even Hawke can act like there's anything uncertain between them, and she pulls herself up on her tiptoes and whispers as much in Hawke's ear.

“This is it, then,” Hawke says hoarsely, “after all this waiting."

Isabela laughs despite herself, breathless. “You’ve been waiting? You?”

“You know I have.”

Isabela wants to scream, but instead she tangles her hands tighter in Hawke’s hair and tugs her down to kiss her. “You’re an idiot,” she tells her, and then she kisses her way down Hawke's neck, pulling Hawke's t-shirt out of the way to kiss along her collarbone. She slides her hands under Hawke's shirt, pushing it up and away to catch at her shoulders, and her mouth joins her hands at Hawke's breasts, deliciously bare underneath the shirt. Hawke's head falls back with a cry when Isabela's mouth closes around her; Isabela works hard to make her repeat that sound again and again.

When Isabela pulls back at last, Hawke's pupils are blown and her lips are half-parted, her chest almost trembling with her unsteady breathing. Isabela stares at her for a long moment, certain that she's never wanted anyone more in her life, and then she remembers to take a breath of her own. She cups the back of Hawke's head again in one hand and tugs her in to kiss her jaw, below her ear, down her neck until Hawke's little gasps dissolve into a breathless nothingness. Her other hand slips between the two of them; she undoes Hawke's belt, then the clasp of her jeans, and she moans into Hawke's shoulder as she trails her fingers down along the soft skin waiting for her there. 

It’s then that Hawke breaks the spell of silence: “Wait, wait—”

Isabela freezes with her hand in Hawke's jeans and her heart in her throat; she jerks away from Hawke's shoulder, searching her face for... anything, anything at all. “Do you not want—”

“No,” Hawke breathes, and she catches Isabela's wrist, traps her between denim and skin, “no, I just—I want to savor—”

“Oh.” Isabela interrupts her with a sharp breath, not willing to let her finish the sentence. She hesitates a moment longer, both of them silent and unmoving, and then she slides her hand away, under Hawke's shirt, splaying her fingers across the plane of Hawke's stomach. She pushes up on her tiptoes to kiss Hawke's jaw. “Okay,” she murmurs. “Okay. I'm sorry. I'm not in a rush.”

Hawke shivers beneath her, tips her head back as Isabela kisses beneath her ear and down her neck. “It's just—it's been so long and now it's—”

“I know. Shh, you don't need to talk.”

“I just—I think you're fantastic, Isabela, and I want this to be something—”

“Stop,” Isabela interrupts, sharper than she means, too afraid to let Hawke finish. “I'm offering sex. Just sex. Is that what you want or not?” She pulls back to study Hawke's face, intent on searching for any sign of uncertainty, but then she can't focus on anything other than the freckles like a starfield across Hawke's nose. With one hand still holding up Hawke's shirt, she settles the other on her cheek and skims her thumb over her cheekbone. Hawke's eyes flutter shut and then open again. “Just sex,” Isabela repeats, softer now; she's surprised by how convincing she sounds. “Nothing more and nothing less, sweet thing.”

Hawke nods, and then she shivers again, buoyed by a breathy laugh. “I know! So let us enjoy it.”

“Right. Right.” Isabela takes a deep breath.

Hawke sounds so certain that Isabela is almost disappointed. Instead she focuses on the important things, like kissing from Hawke’s throat down to her breasts again, or slipping the straps of her own dress off her shoulders. Hawke moans at that, just a little, like two months of waiting have turned a bare shoulder or two into something scandalous; Isabela catches herself wishing for more space than a stall, enough room to undress slowly and make Hawke sit there and watch—to find out what she’d do with more than a shoulder. But she’ll take touch over sight for now.

“God,” Hawke exhales against her, “God, Isabela, you’re beautiful, d'you know, you are so fucking beautiful that I don't have a word for it, but you are, you're the most—”

Isabela laughs, just a little frantic, and cuts her off. “Do you ever stop talking?”

“Make me,” Hawke says. “If you can.”

It’s not easy to make Hawke stop talking. In fact, it's almost impossibly difficult; if Isabela's learned one thing from all this time spent with Hawke, it's that the only possible choice is to talk over her. 

“I’ve been waiting so long,” Isabela tells her, lips on her neck and fingers slipping back below the waist of her jeans, “waiting to be sure that you wanted me like I want you. Did you know that? Did you know that I’ve been thinking about fucking you since I met you? That I walked up to you the first time with thoughts of you underneath me? And now I’ve got you.”

Hawke moans something that sounds nearly like Isabela’s name, drawn out into simply a noise, and Isabela runs a hand over Hawke's underwear, biting back her own groan at the very feel of Hawke through the hot, wet fabric. At last she slips her hand underneath the last bit of thin cotton separating them, running two fingers through the curls between Hawke's legs.

“I’ve got you,” she repeats, her fingers curling up and sliding easily through slick heat. “And everyone saw you come back here with me. Every last person in the bar will know what you’ve been doing. I’m going to fuck you until you can barely stand and then you have to go back out there and know that I’m thinking about everything I’d still like to do to you.”

She can feel Hawke’s body tighten with a sudden jolt when Isabela’s fingers brush across just the right spot, and she tightens the circles traced by her fingers, honing in on the way Hawke trembles and moans at every little touch. She focuses on Hawke because it’s easier that way, easier to watch the way Hawke’s pretty red lips part and her throat tightens with another cry than it is to think about her own racing heart; she concentrates like she can’t ever remember concentrating, like she's finally found something she wants to remember. Every bit of it—the tremor in Hawke’s long legs, the rise and fall of her chest as she vibrates with another cry. And it’s fascinating, intoxicating, addicting.

For a moment, she feels more steady than she’s felt around Hawke in weeks and weeks. This is her territory now, and she knows just what she’s doing.

But that's a feeling that never lasts, not with Hawke.

“Please,” comes the whisper, those lashes fluttering, those blue eyes burning right through Isabela, and all her certainty crumbles back to dust and ashes.

"I've got you," Isabela says again. This time, the third time, the words taste like they mean something different.

And when Hawke finally comes undone around her fingers, it's Isabela who sees stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all credit to the inspiration behind turning wicked grace into an absurd drinking game, IASIP's game chardee macdennis, which 10000% seems like something the kirkwall gang would invent. that's a whole different au tbh
> 
> aveline: i don't know about this--  
> varric: c'mon, red, we have a foolproof system. in, out, profit.  
> hawke: i've personally prepared for every possible scenario.  
> -cut-  
> title card: THE GANG STARTS A RELIGIOUS WAR
> 
> and thanks SO MUCH to everyone who's left a comment or kudos so far, means the absolute world after working on this old thing for so long <333 see you again soon! probably for a shorter chapter because this one is, uh, ridiculous.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL this one is embarrassing. i've been getting my ass kicked at work and all of a sudden september turned into january. i would vow to be better with updates but uhh you'd be excused for not believing me by now :((

vii. september 2

The best part of Hawke's new apartment is the coffee shop across the street, and the best part of the coffee shop across the street is that it's exactly a twelve-and-a-half minute bicycle ride from Merrill's apartment, right on Merrill's regular morning bike route. Hawke's taken to waking up early to meet her there every day. (This is, by the way, a fairly major accomplishment for Hawke, who typically groups 'waking up early' in with things like 'being buried alive' or 'stepping on a Lego.') As it turns out, there's something to be said for waking up before noon. Hawke feels better than she has in months, so charged with sheer vigor that she sometimes feels like taking up running. Not that she really would. But, you know. She _could._

The new apartment isn't the only change that has Hawke feeling better. For one, it’s awfully nice having a new roommate who does things like stock the freezer with mint chocolate chip ice cream without needing to ask, or who casually says things like _I thought we could partition the east corner into a sort of studio, you could paint here by the window and I could work here by the bookcase._ Fenris even negotiated them into the apartment before the end of August, which would have been amazing enough if he also hadn't offered to move her things over while she was at work. When Hawke wakes up early now, she can step into the pink light of dawn and pore over the stacks of books Fenris brought with him; when she comes home, she can drop onto the couch and pelt Fenris with popcorn until he puts his work away and turns on a monster movie. Even Sigourney the goldfish looks more at home here.

There's the bar, too. With Labor Day fast approaching, hordes of students have come pouring back into the neighborhood—and, of course, into the Hanged Man, the only place around with a working jukebox and an owner who regularly replaces stolen billiard balls. Hawke's been getting nearly twice as many hours as she had all summer and she even tossed a few dollars into her savings account with her last paycheck; if you'd asked her a month before, she might not have remembered she _had_ a savings account. All in all, it's been a brilliant few weeks. Home, work, and—well, and there's the other thing. There's definitely the other thing.

'The other thing' is the part where Hawke—Marian Hawke, _the_ Marian Hawke, whose last kiss had been eight months ago and distinctly average at that—has been sleeping with Isabela for two weeks. (Isabela, _the_ Isabela, et cetera.) She still can't believe it. Almost every night, Isabela comes into the bar and orders a drink; they make conversation, both of them watching for the first lull in the crowds; and then, the next thing Hawke knows, they're stumbling into the bathroom or the back closet, tearing off each other's clothes like it's been a month and not a night since the last time.

Hawke's been walking around like some teenager who just discovered kissing for the very first time, tugging her shirt collars up around her neck to hide the marks there, even stupidly showing up with a red bandana around her neck one day and earning a new nickname from Varric, who still can't keep from chuckling when he calls her Cowboy. (And all for nothing, too: Isabela absconded with the bandana at the end of the night, using it to tie up her wild hair before disappearing with a wink and leaving Hawke alone and dizzy and blatantly just-fucked in the back.) Not that it matters. It would take a lot more than a nickname to detract from the fact that nearly every night, Hawke gets to make the woman who's been haunting her dreams for months fall apart in the broom closet. Or vice versa. Or both.

It's not a bad life, really. And when Hawke wakes up early on a Saturday morning, she wakes up _happy,_ a sense of raw joy she'd nearly forgotten over the past year rising in her with the sun. This particular Saturday means working on getting the apartment in order; it means a long shift and plenty of tips; and it means Isabela. And it means jumping out of bed, tugging on joggers and a t-shirt, and walking a whopping two minutes to meet Merrill across the street. At her old place, two minutes might have gotten you to an alley, or another alley, or—if you walked fast—the bodega with all the city health warnings in the windows.

Merrill's bike is already locked to the rack outside the coffee shop when Hawke arrives and they spy each other through the window, trading wide grins and happy waves. By the time Hawke has gotten through the door and exchanged hellos with the already-familiar barista, Merrill has hopped up from the cozy bench by the window to greet Hawke in the middle of the shop.

“I have big news,” Merrill declares, wrapping her up in a warm, extravagant hug. "No time to waste! Hurry, let's sit."

Hawke laughs and grips Merrill in a matching embrace, one arm lingering over Merrill's thin shoulders as they head towards the counter to order. “Tell me as soon as we get something to eat,” she says, digging her wallet out of her pocket. “Breakfast is on me.”

Merrill frowns, leaning into Hawke's hold and peering up at the menu. “Oh, you don't need to do that! I don't want to trouble you—”

“It's not any trouble,” Hawke says, all the more determined to buy Merrill's breakfast now. Not one of her friends ever lets her buy _anything._ Hawke's never complained about money in front of them, not once, but it hasn't saved her from a reputation as the perpetually-broke member of their circle. But Hawke's just cut three hundred dollars off her rent, and fuck if she's not going to buy Merrill something to eat. “I'll have a medium dark roast and a croissant,” she tells the barista. “And she'll have—”

Merrill sighs. “A small strawberry smoothie, please. Thank you, Hawke.”

Hawke hands over a crumpled twenty; the change is considerably less than she'd imagined, but she pockets it with a smile. “All you have to do to pay me back is tell me your big news.”

“Oh! Right!” Merrill bounces on her toes with anticipation as Hawke collects her coffee and croissant. They move down the counter to wait for Merrill’s smoothie, but the news can’t wait another minute: “I found Isabela's birthday!”

Hawke pauses, tries to understand what that could possibly mean, and quickly gives up. “You what?”

“She wrote it all down for me ages ago, but I lost the napkin and I couldn't remember! But I found it last week in my button drawer, so I could finally finish her birth chart.”

“Oh.” Hawke gives her best, most polite nod. It's not worth asking clarifying questions with Merrill sometimes. “So the news is that—”

“That I finished her chart,” Merrill repeats, her excitement unaffected by Hawke's expression. “Do you want to know what I learned?”

“I already know Isabela.”

Merrill tries again with a pointed waggle of her brows: “I could tell you about your relationship.”

Hawke bites her tongue to hold back a groan; it's been years since she'd sat through Merrill's speech on _their_ friendship compatibility (high, which had not been surprising, given that they were already friends at that point). As Merrill collects her smoothie, Hawke moves towards the seats by the window. “We don't have a relationship.”

“Not yet,” Merrill says, which is the kind of thing she always says when it comes to Isabela—sort of sweet and sort of creepy. “But don’t you want to know if it’s possible?”

Merrill looks so earnest, so downright pleased with herself, that Hawke can't do anything but relent. “Alright. What's in the stars, spaceman?”

Merrill pauses. “I also have some personal opinions, if that's alright.”

Hawke takes a long swig of her coffee. It's not nearly strong enough to brace her for whatever this might involve. “Okay. Hit me with those too.”

“You respect each other,” Merrill says. “You'd be good business partners.”

“Excellent.” Hawke takes another sip. “Exactly what I was hoping to hear.”

“Lots of physical energy. You have compatible creative energies, too.”

“Are you getting all of this off the internet?”

“But she might make you feel insecure,” Merrill continues, undaunted or oblivious, “or discouraged and frustrated. She's too unpredictable. But you're headstrong and too sensitive, and you make her feel irritated and misunderstood, probably because you’re actually not very understanding. You both have lots of secrets and you’re not very good communicators.”

Hawke starts shaking her head before Merrill can finish. “First of all, this conversation is not nearly as fun as I thought it would be, and second of all, I don't have any secrets.”

“Have you told her you love her?” Merrill, patient as an extremely-gossipy saint, waits for a long minute for Hawke to answer. But she doesn't, and Merrill nods. “That's a secret, isn't it?”

Hawke looks around her, like Isabela might pop up out of the corner, ready to jab a finger right into her heart and accuse her of everything. She shakes her head. “I don't. I—I mean, I hardly know her, right?”

Merrill frowns. “You've known her for months.”

“I know, but—” Hawke swallows. “The thing is, I like her, obviously. You know that. But I can’t really think about that right now.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why can’t you?”

Hawke frowns. “Because I'm trying not to ruin everything, obviously.”

“How can love ruin anything? Love is wonderful.”

Hawke shakes her head. “Don’t use that word.”

“Which one?”

“Love. That's not what it is.”

Merrill looks like she might object, but instead she merely shrugs. “Not yet,” she says again.

"You just told me what a bad match we were."

"That was the stars," Merrill tells her around a mouthful of strawberry smoothie. "I also have personal opinions, remember? I like you both so much! That means I like you twice as much together."

Hawke glances down at her napkin, where she's absent-mindedly shredded one end of her croissant without noticing. She frowns down at the mess. "So what was the point of telling me all the bad stuff?"

"Oh, I skipped most of the really bad bits," Merrill says, looking surprised. “Don’t worry about those. Or did you want me to give you my notes?"

"Merrill," Hawke says. "I love you and you’re perfect, but we can probably change the subject now."

"You should ask her to dinner," Merrill says. "Like a date. She would say yes."

Hawke laughs despite herself at Merrill's sweet optimism, at the very idea of sitting down at a restaurant across from Isabela and trying to pretend that there was anything normal going on between them at all. But then again—and a touch of the same wild optimism floods Hawke, too, for a single moment—if anyone might know otherwise, it would be Merrill, who’s apparently managed to talk Isabela into casually swapping birthdays and phone numbers when Hawke doesn’t even know her last name. She hesitates, and then exhales. "No. I don’t know. I don’t think she would.”

“She might,” Merrill says, and she lifts her chin and squares her shoulders like she’s about to launch into some speech that will be encouraging and loving and deeply uncomfortable for everyone else in the coffee shop, given the enthusiastic volume at which it will almost certainly be delivered.

Hawke activates the emergency protocol: “D’you want to come help us finish decorating the apartment?”

Merrill doesn’t answer, but only because she’s already halfway out the door by the time Hawke’s finished with the question.

Between Fenris, Hawke, and Merrill, the apartment doesn’t stand a chance. Merrill comes flying through the old steel freight doors like she’s been hired to renovate some grand palace, already brimming with ideas, and Fenris and Hawke are glad to trot around obediently following her every instruction (even if they wouldn’t have minded an extra set of hands hauling Hawke’s mattress up to the mezzanine). When Hawke has to leave for work, she leaves Fenris and Merrill arguing—gleefully, like it’s the most fun they’ve had all day—about the best way to get art up on their brick walls, and their laughter carries her all the way down the block and to the bar.

When she arrives at the Hanged Man, Varric’s waiting in a mood to match hers, greeting her with a cheer and a happy clap on the back. “Howdy, Cowboy,” he says, lifting an imagined ten gallon hat in welcome. “Ready for a busy night?”

“Couldn’t be readier.” She ruffles his hair in the way he hates, laughs, and skips out of his reach when he complains. “Can I steal a beer? It’s hot as shit in here.”

“Are you gonna pay for it?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Hold on.” He claps a hand over his eyes and waves at her to go ahead with his other hand, spreading his fingers just slightly and grinning once he hears her pop the can. “I’ll assume you paid for that when I wasn’t looking.”

“Good call.” Hawke passes him the drink and he readily takes a gulp of his own stolen goods, the two of them trading wide smiles as he passes it back. Things are the way they ought to be now, the way they were before things got tight over the summer: her boss is her best friend, the bar is thriving, and the nights are too crowded with laughter to leave room for much else. Hawke could get used to this.

As the college crowds pack into the Hanged Man, Hawke’s other friends trickle in, too: Merrill makes an appearance, Anders and Fenris join Hawke at the bar, and even Donnic shows up just to stand by the door and flirt with Aveline for half the evening. But for all those glad distractions, Hawke keeps one eye on the door. She always does these days.

At long last, her patience is rewarded: the final piece of her perfect Saturday falls into place—or, rather, saunters into place. Isabela’s approach seems to take a lifetime; the stretch of floor from the door to the bar must extend for miles. Hawke waits, breathless and giddy, and then she’s there and everything is right.

“It’s getting late. I wasn't sure if you were coming,” Hawke says.

“I wouldn't miss it for the world. Best seat in the house,” Isabela says, dropping into the one open barstool, the one Hawke’s been rushing people out of all night. She's barely audible over the student on either side: Anders, with his pocket-sized _Communist Manifesto_ in one hand and a beer in the other, and Fenris, who keeps interrupting Anders' lecture on class conflict with ferocious declarations that Anders knows nothing about the real world. (Every time Anders repeats _that's the point,_ Fenris turns even redder.) "Completely different subject, but are they going to be here _every_ night, do you think?"

Hawke laughs. "This is how I keep a spot open for you. You ought to thank them.”

“Thank you, boys,” Isabela says, lifting her brows pointedly at Hawke when neither acknowledges her over their argument. “Can you dispel them now? A magic word?”

Hawke leans over the bar to wave a hand in front of Anders’ face mid-monologue. “If you two go fight in the back I’ll buy your drinks for the rest of the night.”

Impressively, Anders and Fenris manage to stand, take their drinks, and move towards an empty table without ever breaking eye contact or pausing their argument, and Hawke and Isabela watch them disappear into the dark corner with genuine admiration.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Isabela muses, and then she turns to Hawke with a grin. “Which will they do first: hook up or murder each other?”

“Eugh,” Hawke laughs. “I’m not answering that. Or thinking about it. What do you want to drink?”

“It’s been a long day. Something strong enough to start it over.” She leans forward, her chin on her hands, and smiles warm enough to sand the edge off her order. As ever, Hawke is glad to comply.

The night is a busy one, and the flow of the evening takes Hawke away—swapping off with Varric and back again, up and down the bar, occasionally catching Isabela’s eye long enough to exchange smiles or to raise her brows as if to say _what a crowd_ or _wish I was talking to you_ or _did I mention you look amazing tonight._ When there’s a lull in the crowd, she gladly makes her way back.

“Hi,” she says, taking a bar rag to the square of wood in front of Isabela. “How’s everything?”

“Awful. Take a break and play a game with me, sweet thing,” Isabela says, long past the point of bothering with questions like _are you busy?_ (Hawke is, of course, always busy and always willing.) She slides her empty glass across the bar. “I’ll let you go first if you trade this in for two shots of something strong and disgusting. One for me and one for you. And something else for me to sip on.”

“Deal,” Hawke says, scanning the wall for an appropriately strong-and-disgusting bottle. “Pick someone for me.” She’s caught on by now to Isabela’s go-to game, even if she’s not quite as skilled as Isabela, who can pick out the most ordinary person in the crowd at the Hanged Man and leave Hawke doubled over with laughter at some imagined backstory—an Olympic-level people-watcher.

“Let’s do couples. Those two over there,” Isabela says. Hawke follows her gaze to a man across the room with a dark mustache and a PBR in his hand. He's gesturing effusively with his free hand, leaning in towards the woman he's with, who's tapping the table with one manicured nail and looking off to the side.

“First date,” Hawke decides after a moment of thought. “He's telling her how _American Psycho_ fuckin' changed his life, ma-a-an.”

Isabela laughs. “Wait, how about this: they've been together for four years. Angela used to think it was cute how Rory would drink too much and ramble about Bukowski, but now when he speaks, all she can think about is how much better his best friend is in bed.”

“Bukowski! Yes! Okay, what about those two over there?”

Isabela purses her lips as she studies the couple side-by-side in the corner, one man holding his beer with both hands, the other man with his hands folded in his lap. Every once in a while, the second man looks like he's telling a joke, his face taking on a new hopeful expressiveness, and the first man blandly smiles and nods. "They've been going out for a few months, but Lars with the beer has been wanting to end things since the second date. Poor hot, stupid Justin—he tried to date outside his comfort zone, and now he can't figure out why he's so lonely. It'll be another two months before they split."

Hawke claps both hands over her mouth, which does absolutely nothing to repress her laughter. "Christ, that's horrible. And elaborate. I was going to say they came from a bad movie. How do you come up with this?"

Isabela smiles over the rim of her glass. "It's easy. Start with the assumption that every couple is miserable and in denial."

"Not _every_ couple," Hawke says automatically, but Isabela just lifts her brows. Hawke frowns out into the dim room, finally settling on a young man helping his date get a grip on her pool cue. "Those two?"

"He's a condescending dick and she's too young to realize it," Isabela says, giving them only the briefest glance. "Come on, sweetness, no one's thrilled to be on a date to the Hanged Man. And the game's no fun if everyone's happy, anyway. That’s boring."

"Happy's not boring! What’s wrong with happy?"

Isabela looks just a little amused. "How many serious relationships have you been in, Hawke?"

"Two," Hawke says, and then she thinks about it. "Sort of. One and a half," she amends.

"So which one's boring and which one's exciting—and I mean really, truly exciting: one and a half serious relationships, or letting me find a new way to fuck you every night?" When Hawke can't stammer out an answer quickly enough, Isabela just grins and takes another drink. "I notice you've chosen the latter, anyway. You'll see. Once you've gotten used to freedom, it's not easy to go back and tie your happiness to someone else again."

"It’s not about being tied to someone," Hawke says, feeling defensive of nothing in particular. "Loads of couples manage to be happy just fine. Anyway, what would you know about relationships?”

Isabela’s expression darkens. "More than you think, apparently. Are you arguing for the fun of arguing, or are you really trying to prove some point?

“I’m not trying to prove a point. I just think you’re being unfair.”

"I'll tell you, Hawke, you're doing a terrible job of getting laid tonight."

Hawke flushes and looks down at her shoes, half-irritated and half-embarrassed, but when she looks back up, she's surprised to see Isabela smiling, a glint in her eyes and no trace of that dark cloud over her face. "What?" she asks, trying to puzzle out what she’s missed in the last two seconds. Out of all the things Isabela does that confuse her, this might be the most bewildering: a flash of some deeper feeling, and then a return right back to their usual routine like nothing ever happened. Those are the moments when she’s not sure she really knows Isabela at all.

"Just terrible," Isabela says again, her voice warmer. "You'd better be on your very best behavior now."

Hawke feels her cheeks getting hot again, although in a much, much nicer way, and she lets Isabela’s smile push all the confusion and frustration out of her mind. “Oh,” she says. “Yes ma’am.”

"Try something different," Isabela suggests. "Tell me I'm gorgeous."

“You’re gorgeous,” Hawke says obediently.

“I already said that.” Isabela waves a hand. “Paraphrase.”

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

She sniffs. “Too sweet. Try something dirty.”

Hawke takes a deep, just-slightly-nervous breath. “If you meet me in the back, I can make you come at least twice before anyone even notices we’re missing.”

Isabela’s eyes widen in surprise, which makes Hawke grin. “That’s more like it.”

Hawke drops her bar towel and heads towards the back, not needing to look to know that Isabela is only a step behind her.

It’s amazing, Hawke thinks, how something can become a routine without being even slightly _routine._ Nothing about this is ever predictable; she could do it every night and never get bored. Sometimes they stumble into the bathroom, where Isabela shoves Hawke up against the stall door and makes it rattle so loudly that it seems to drown out every moan and shout; sometimes it’s the broom closet, where Hawke can drop to her knees and pull Isabela close until she can’t taste or hear or think about anything else; sometimes they best they can do is the back alley, where they take turns pushing each other against the bricks and seeing just how much they can get away with—Isabela’s hand down Hawke’s jeans, Hawke’s hand up Isabela’s skirt, sliding slick lace to the side.

Tonight, it’s the broom closet.

There’s a light in the closet—one bare bulb—but it’s always more fun in the dark. Hawke gets there first. When Isabela arrives, she stands illuminated in the open door for just an instant, just long enough for Hawke to glimpse a grin that says _anything could happen next_ before the door shuts.

“I’m going to hold you to your promise, sweetness,” she says, the click of her heels on the concrete floor growing slowly closer. Hawke doesn’t need to see her to picture her perfectly: her slow, swaying walk, the want in her eyes, her dress sliding up her thighs with each step—the way that she’s always, always putting on a show, even in the dark.

Hawke starts to say something brilliant and witty and dirty, the sort of quip some smoldering hero might utter while stepping off the cover of a romance novel, but then Isabela steps into her waiting hands and Hawke forgets every thought she’s ever had. Isabela’s skin is unexpectedly bare against her fingertips, and as Hawke slides one hand up her back and one down to her ass, it dawns on her that Isabela’s dress is lying somewhere on the closet floor. “Wow,” she manages instead, and Isabela laughs low and rough against her neck.

“Come on, then,” Isabela presses. “Something about ‘at least twice.’ I don’t have all night, you know.”

“Right,” Hawke breathes, trying to bring herself back down to Earth—not an easy task with Isabela’s breath on her neck and Isabela’s body soft and pliant against her. “Well, I don’t want to keep you waiting. Let’s see what we can do.”

In the darkness, Hawke makes good on her promise and Isabela repays her fully, the noise of the bar drowned out by the trembling moans and rough cries that fill the space—and, in the most sacred moments, the moments Hawke will carry with her always, their breathy, raw laughter. There’s nothing to see but an entire universe to sense: the spice of Isabela’s perfume and the lingering burn of cigarette smoke; the sound of her name on Isabela’s lips and every soft whimper in between; every electric spot where skin meets skin; and, best of all, the taste of Isabela on her tongue, nearly enough to wreck her.  

Even when they’re spent, when neither can lift a finger, they stay tangled together on the floor as their heartbeats steady, hands still in each other’s hair and Isabela’s lips still pressed to Hawke’s collarbone. It’s as close as Hawke thinks she’s ever come to rapture.

“I really need to get back out there,” Hawke says at last, hardly meaning it, but Isabela doesn’t move.

“The bar won’t burn down without you,” she says, her voice still hazy. “Actually, it’s much more likely to burn down _with_ you.”

“Varric won’t be happy.”

“That’s his problem, not mine.”

“It’s sort of mine,” Hawke points out.

“I’ll happily let you up when I can feel my legs,” Isabela tells her. “Grow up and take some responsibility for your actions, Hawke.”

She says it seriously, haughtily, but they’re both laughing by the time she’s finished her sentence, and Hawke bravely tightens her arms around Isabela. This part—this post-coital-embrace-on-the-cold-floor part—is new and she has no plans to protest too much, job security be damned. She could get used to this, she thinks. If every night could be like this, this could be enough.

But Hawke’s never been able to let a silence stretch on too long, and finally she shifts beneath Isabela, clearing her throat. “Are you happy?” she asks. Isabela’s fingers pause on the back of her neck.

“Of course. Aren’t you?”

“Mm,” Hawke agrees. “Only you told me happy was boring, so I wasn’t sure about this.”

“That’s not what I meant, sweet thing.” Isabela resumes playing with Hawke’s hair again, tracing circles on the nape of her neck, trailing through the short hairs there. “Happy to get fucked in a closet is different. We’re not like everyone out there,” she says, “on first or third or twenty-seventh dates who _think_ they’re happy. Do you know what I mean? We don’t have to keep any secrets.”

“Yeah,” Hawke says, remembering and doing her damnedest to forget Merrill’s warnings about secrets and lies and all the rest. “I think you’re right. That’s the difference.”

There in the dark, with Isabela’s head on her chest and hands in her hair and both their hearts half-bared, Hawke chooses to believe it.

viii. september 20

It’s not often Isabela finds herself counting down the hours to an early Wednesday evening, but tonight is different. And it’s not often she finds herself braving rush hour traffic in a cab to the heart of downtown, beset by dickheads slamming their horns in one lane and tourists driving at a snail’s pace in the other as she checks the time again and again. There aren’t many people she’d endure the whole ugly mess for, really. But one of the only ones worth the trouble—one of her very oldest and best friends—is waiting for her through a set of famous wrought-iron doors, and when she finally arrives, she can’t keep the smile off her face as she chats her way past the doorman and steps inside.

He's waiting in the lobby when she gets there, leaning across the front desk and flirting with the handsome young clerk. He looks the same, only—not quite. Older, his hair longer and lighter and unbraided, clad in more expensive leather than she's seen in one place since a certain themed party that... well, actually, he'd been the one to invite her to that party, and he'd been the one to whisk her down the fire escape when the police arrived.

“Zevran Arainai! Since when does a place like this let in a man like you?”

When Zevran whips around, he lights up, the poor clerk forgotten. “Isabela, _amore mio_! I thought you would never make it! Come, come—we must start the night with a drink!”

Like always, he moves at a whirlwind's pace, rough hands to her elbows, a kiss on each cheek, and then he whisks her to the hotel bar before she has time to so much as whisper something dirty in his ear.

It's been nearly two years since she last saw Zevran, the last time his travels had brought him back to her, but they've known each other for a decade now: he'd been the first friendly face she'd ever met in the city, back when he was just some scrawny punk with a big smile who strutted around Little Italy like he owned the place. He'd always had a lie on the tip of his tongue back then, from a fake ID to cheerful claims that he could have anyone who messed with her killed. He’d taken her to parts of the city she hadn't imagined, down cobblestone backstreets and into dark, smoky clubs where they played poker with grandfathers, drank wickedly-bitter negronis, and ate fresh pasta by the pound. He bought her cheap costume jewelry with cash borrowed from the pockets of tourists, stole her silk scarves from department stores, and dragged her across clubs and bars and the whole city as her loyal wingman; he served her the city on a silver platter.

She’d been a creature on the run when she met him, composed mostly of fear and hunger and hard edges; he showed her the pleasure in being still, in fine food and wine and perfume—tactile things she could touch and feel and call her own. More than that, he made her feel safe, like she’d found somewhere she could stay, and he shouldered her heaviest secrets like they were his own. He was the one who repeatedly reminded her that she belonged only to herself; he was the one who wielded _you look so happy_ like the greatest compliment he knew. There had never been a better friend than Zevran Arainai. Isabela thought you’d be hard pressed to find a better man.

It took years of a fierce and flirtatious friendship for them to first fall into bed together, but then they'd fallen there every chance they got—both of them unlearning old aches imprinted on their bodies and replacing them with unabashed joy. Then Zevran ruined it; he fell in love. Not with her, of course—they were both too smart for that—but not smart enough to avoid falling for a tall, handsome diplomat who disappeared and reappeared on a whim. Eventually he disappeared and took Zev with him.

When Zevran came back the first time, Isabela barely recognized him beneath the expensive clothes and knowing smile: for once he was involved in a scheme he couldn’t tell her about, and he spent his own money instead of loose bills fished out of pockets and purses. But she had changed too, of course, had moved away from the dirty corner of the city they’d called their own and settled into a brand new life. They’d been relieved to discover that their new differences still fit together in all the right ways.

Now, all these years later, they still fit together just as well. This hotel might be incomparably nice, of course, compared to their old apartments; they have a reservation at a restaurant they both would have sneered at once upon a time. But their friendship is the same, and even before they have their drinks in hand, their laughter is loud enough to light up the whole city block.

“You look amazing,” Zevran repeats at least twice, eyes shining like polished topaz, one hand already on her leg. “You look so very happy, my love. Gorgeous. Healthy.”

“And _you_ look brown. Where have you been now?”

He chuckles. “You know I couldn’t tell you I’ve spent a month in Malta even if I wanted to.”

“What were you—” She catches herself. “I know, I know. You can’t tell me. But a hint wouldn’t hurt.”

“Lots of meetings,” he says, shrugging innocently. When the bartender at last comes over—Isabela finds herself feeling slightly miffed, far too used to one particularly attentive bartender—Zevran orders them each a pair of martinis, ever an impatient drinker.

“Shall we drink each other under the table?”

“Oh, let’s get halfway there, at any rate.”

He chuckles. “Perfect! Now, tell me every last detail of your life since I’ve seen you. Leave nothing out.”

“You’ve heard all the good bits already,” she points out, and it’s true. No matter where in the world Zevran is, they manage to stay in contact—no shortage of dirty photos and fond texts and, when they get the rare chance, phone calls that last hours.

“Ah, but I want to hear it all again with you here in front of me! Let’s start with work,” he says, somehow making even that proposition sound like a dirty one. “We must save the truly juicy parts for later. We waited a year to get this table—we’re not drinking through our reservation this time.”

By the time they stand to walk to the restaurant, Isabela’s already pleasantly tipsy and the color is high in Zevran’s cheeks, and their conversation—with their mother tongues blending into their own private language, composed half of cognates and half of laughter—carries them quickly to the restaurant doors. Zevran pauses outside to comb his hands through his long, cornsilk hair, as if fixing his hair might be enough to turn tight leather pants and five inches of bare chest into the formal dress code.

“I’m still eating if they don’t let you in,” Isabela tells him, and he grins.

“They won’t look twice at me, not with you leading the way in that dress. Come, come, _andiamo_!”

Somehow he’s right: they’re shown to their table in a dining room full of gentlemen in neckties and women in gowns that Isabela imagines cost more than her annual rent with no one giving them a second look. It’s exactly the sort of place Isabela would never step foot in if not for Zevran; she’d drag him to the dirty 24-hour diner at the end of her block if it were up to her. But he spends months and months planning these rare evenings together—only the very best the city has to offer will do, he tells her—and she’d never say no to him, not when he says things like that.

The food is dizzyingly, outrageously wonderful, a series of otherworldly dishes one after another; the wine is nearly as good. Their conversation fades into dazed sighs of _oh wow_ and _dios mío_ and occasionally, with near-religious awe: _well, fuck me._ It’s unlike anything Isabela’s ever experienced; in fact, it’s the first meal that’s ever been absorbing enough to keep her from teasing Zevran under the table. A remarkable nine courses and an ocean of wine later, they stumble out of the restaurant and back into the night, arms linked together and their laughter echoing off the buildings. The city shines as bright as Isabela thinks she’s ever seen it.

“Are you thirsty?” Zevran asks, fitting the words in around snorts of laughter. “I could go for a drink.”

After that, the evening passes in a wild, joyful blur, like it always does when they’re together. No one can eat and drink like Zev, but Isabela can very nearly match him. They follow their dinner with drinks—and then, drunk enough that the idea no longer seems obscene, they follow drinks with almost-comically-large slices of pizza, tucked into the back corner of some hole-in-the-wall. Only then, both of them warm and full and flushed, does Zevran reach across the table and grab her hands. “Tell me you’re coming back to the hotel with me for another drink. I cannot say goodbye to you yet.”

“ _Sí, sí_.” She laughs, her cheeks hot with the rush of the liquor and the laughter both. “How could I say no to that?”

After all this time, there’s hardly any point in pretending; when they return to the hotel, neither is thinking of another drink, and by the time the elevator opens to Zevran’s floor, there’s a rip in Isabela’s tights and a red smear of lipstick down his neck. She manages only one bland observation about how lovely his suite is before they’re falling into bed together, tugged down half by lust and half by the influence of an entire night spent eating and drinking.

It takes them a minute to adjust—Isabela moves to straddle his waist, thinks better of it, and slides down into the pile of feather pillows to pull him on top of her instead; Zevran succeeds in keeping his balance from above her better than she’d managed, but he’s not exactly steady either. But at last their bodies slot together with a familiar precision, and in another minute their clothes are piled on the floor beside them.

As ever, Zevran looks like some perfect Renaissance marble brought to life: maddeningly, spectacularly, soberingly beautiful. The chance to take in the sight of him is nearly pleasure enough after so long; the chance to knot her hands in his long hair and guide his mouth down from her breasts to her waist isn’t bad, either. He’s equal parts gorgeous and eager to please. A woman could hardly ask for anything more.

It’s so easy to be with Zevran, like slipping into a favorite dress. Or maybe a favorite pair of handcuffs. He knows exactly what to do, where to bite and kiss and caress and slap, when to yield control and when to pretend to reclaim it. Easy, but never boring: they twist themselves up in knots, Isabela straddling his waist one moment and face-down amongst the pillows the next, Zevran’s hands and mouth seemingly everywhere at once. She likes him best on his back, his golden hair strewn across the pillows and his chest heaving with want; most of all she likes to pull away and look at him, to pin his wrists to the mattress and watch him struggle to earn his pleasure. She comes easily for him—not wildly, no thunder and lightning, but readily and gladly, with her hands in his hair and his hot tongue and nimble fingers guiding her up and back down again.

She’s back beneath him when she first feels his hunger shift into desperation—his breath turning to pants and whimpers, the way his hips twitch as he tries to find any relief for his cock hard against her—and she draws him back up the length of her body. She kisses him one more time, tastes herself on his lips, and finally eases her hold on him. “ _Quiero que me cojas_.”

“ _Per favore._ ”

And it’s easy. It’s always easy with Zevran. It’s easy to move with him, moan in all the right moments, and still find enough room in her head for thoughts of blue eyes and sideways smiles to creep in. When Zevran comes with a grunt and a gasp, the fantasy playing out in Isabela’s mind is enough to bring her with him.

Their night ends not with a grand explosion, not with the two of them flinging themselves down into the sheets with breathless sighs and trembling hands, but with a look they’ve never quite exchanged before: both pausing and looking at each other as if to say _well, I’m finished if you are._ Less like driving off a cliff and more like pulling into a parking spot. They lay there for a few minutes, catching their breath and studying each other with quiet, puzzled affection.

At last Zevran rises from the bed. Isabela watches his back as he drops the condom in the trash and fishes his underwear up off the floor, and wonders how on earth she’s clear-headed and he’s standing on steady legs. It’s the first time she’s ever felt quite so... normal after a night with Zevran. “That was fun,” Isabela says at last. And it _was_ fun. Only—different.

Zevran nods too-enthusiastically. “ _Sì, sì_ ,” he agrees, before looking over with his brows lifted. “Different, though, no?”

“Do you think so? I didn’t notice,” Isabela says. She rolls to the side of the bed and stretches out as wide as she can; Zevran drops beside her, looking down at her from his cross-legged perch.

“I know you, _bella._  Your mind was elsewhere.”

“Really? You think I could hold that last position without absolute concentration?”

His lips twitch with a smile. “Of course. You are a very talented woman and perfectly capable of distraction.”

She shakes her head. "Not distracted. Only tired, sore, and full of pizza. Mostly tired. In the interest of full disclosure, I came here from a, ah... romp with someone else, and then our night was hardly relaxing.”

“Oh-ho! Now you’ve piqued my interest.” He looks well and truly delighted, drawing his legs up to rest his chin on his knees and beaming at her. “Tell me all about this someone else.”

"No one important."

"No? Important enough that you saw them tonight even after you and I have been planning this evening for so long? You know I'm not offended," he adds, laughing, waving a hand when she starts to protest. "Only curious. Extremely."

She exhales. "Do you remember the bartender I texted you about?"

"No!" Zevran exclaims—the sort of faux-scandalized, delighted _no_ that absolutely means _yes._ "Truly? The one you've been eyeing all summer?"

"Eyeing all summer and fucking for a month," Isabela says, adding a quick qualifier: "or so. I thought one drink might make the trip downtown go a little easier, so I dropped by, and then... got distracted."

He snorts. “I am always impressed by how much drinking and fucking you can fit into your schedule.”

“Well, I have to be sure you have something to aspire to.”

“Tell me about her,” Zevran urges.

Isabela wants to say no—wants to brush it away and forget about Hawke and have another drink until she can breathe easy and ignore the world beyond this hotel room. But he looks so serious, so intent, his pale eyes framed by the tangled golden halo of his hair. And, she thinks, if she doesn't tell him, then she'll never tell anyone. She takes a breath. “I wouldn't know where to start.”

“At the beginning,” he suggests. He smiles. “Is she better-looking than me?”

Isabela laughs and closes her eyes just long enough to see Hawke's crooked smile imprinted on her eyelids. “No one's as pretty as you, Zev. But she's something else. She's devastating, is what she is. Unreasonably tall, a haircut that can't be intentional. But she's got this smile, and these eyes—I can hardly stand to have her look at me sometimes. And her laugh—she just has this _energy—_ ”

“She's funny?”

“Not at all.” But even saying it, Isabela can't help but laugh. “She’s awful. She's—she's so thoughtful and kind, which I want to hate, but I can’t with her.”

“And the sex?” Zevran waggles his brows, looking like he's been waiting and waiting to get to this question. Isabela can't help but match his smile.

“Earth-shattering and frequent.” Isabela shakes her head. "It's all I think about."

“Details, details!”

“A lady doesn't kiss and tell.”

“Ah, but _you_ always do.”

She laughs, shakes her head again. “I'm not sure she's ever had sex that wasn't agonizingly boring before me, but she's a quick learner.” She pauses. “She trusts me, and I trust her. There’s only so much we can do at the bar. But—”

He interrupts: “You haven't followed her home yet?”

“No, no.”

“Have you had her over?”

“No! You know how I am about that.”

He raises a brow. “I thought it might be different. The way you talk about her—”

“It’s only casual.”

“Which one of you is saying that?”

“Both of us.”

“Do either of you mean it?”

“We both do,” Isabela says, more firmly.

“You sound fond of her.”

“No. I am.” Isabela hesitates. “We're friends. I'm fond of her like a friend.”

"A friend you fuck."

"I have lots of friends I fuck," Isabela reminds him.

"Do you, though? Really?" He lifts his brows. "Don't count me. Don't count her. How many others, currently?"

Isabela scowls at him. "Historically speaking."

"And how many other people have you slept with this month?"

"Three. Four. Seven hundred and twelve. I don't know." Isabela flops back in the pillows again, squinting up at the ceiling to see if that helps summon up any other faces that she might have let between her legs this month. There was that woman when Hawke missed a shift, the one with the dimples and the handcuffs in her purse. _That_ had been fun, and she hadn't even thought about Hawke, not really. (At least not until she got home, where she did, admittedly, drop a set of handcuffs in her own purse and make herself come twice to the thought of Hawke in them. But that didn't really count and anyway, she was still working on getting Hawke warmed up to that sort of thing.) Or there had been that fellow with the floppy black hair and the goofy grin below a big nose, but—ah, well, shit. That one was too obvious.

"Four?" Zevran asks.

"Two." When she looks back at him, he’s not smiling anymore, just staring wide-eyed.

"Ah, _amore mio_ —you're in a mess and you do not even know it.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I know a mess when I see one.”

“What on Earth are you going to do?"

“She's so young,” Isabela says, ignoring the question and rolling away from him again to stare up at the ceiling. “Barely twenty-five.”

“What is that, a year's difference? Hardly so bad.”

She glances back at him and smiles despite herself. “Ha. You know it's nearly eight.”

“I'm surprised it bothers you,” he says.

So is she. Normally it wouldn't, but— “She's just... she _acts_ like it. I can hardly bear it sometimes.”

"Childish?"

"No, not like that. I don't know. Naïve. And kind and sweet and a little ridiculous.”

“How awful! How terrible!” He clutches his chest and rocks back in a grand display of misery.

“Shut up.” She swats at him; he artfully blocks it with a pillow. “You know what I mean, don’t you? Can you imagine me spending every night with someone like that?”

“Ah, you’re losing your mind, aren’t you?” He laughs. “Maybe that’s good, no? You haven’t been with anyone familiar with the notion of kindness before.”

“I’m not _with_ her,” Isabela reminds him. But she knows what he means; she knows how easy it is to make the comparison, especially for Zevran. He’s known her long enough to remember.

“What’s her name?”

“Marian, but she goes by Hawke,” Isabela says, and then she glances sideways to see Zevran with his phone in his hands and a big, satisfied smile on his face.

“The bird?”

She sighs. “With an E, if you’re doing what I think you are.”

He purses his lips, briefly captivated by his phone, and then looks up and turns the screen towards her. “This one?”

Isabela sits up and grabs the phone out of his hand despite herself, spitting square in the face of all her eloquent claims about the utter pointlessness of social media. There she is, Hawke’s energy not nearly contained by the square in the middle of the screen: her arms thrown up and out of the frame, her head thrown back with laughter, precariously perched on Varric’s shoulders. “That one,” she confirms.

Zevran reaches over her and taps the picture, swiping through other photos, each of which Isabela tries to memorize before he can swipe away from it: Hawke and Aveline smiling together, a grinning Hawke with a dog in her arms, Hawke laughing with her hands up to the camera. “She’s cute, this little hawk of yours,” he says. Isabela looks at him sideways.

“Cute?”

“I’m glad that you know someone who smiles at you like this.”

Isabela frowns down at the picture of Hawke with that enormous blazing grin. Zevran’s wrong, she thinks. That’s not how Hawke smiles at her at all. Hawke smiles at her as slow as dawn and as sweet as honey, a little bit crooked and a little bit melancholy and so, so lovely. There’s no sign of that smile here; _that_ one is all hers, she thinks, and she feels suddenly fiercely possessive and deeply satisfied. She hands him the phone. “Are you finished now?”

“Absolutely not,” Zevran says, but he stretches to deposit his phone on the bedside table anyway. He turns back to her with a gleam still in his eyes and his lips parted with some other question, but Isabela manages to cut him off this time.

"Let's talk about you," she says, not exactly subtle but stern enough to make her point. "How's you-know-who? Still traveling?"

He looks at her funny for a moment, like he’s deciding whether or not to push the issue further, but a smile at last fills his face. “Always, always. It’s a busy season. But we were together for a while in Malta, and I’ll see him again in November.”

“You really do have it made. Your gorgeous boyfriend sends you around the world in style and you never even have to see him.”

“Ha,” Zevran says, frowning now. “You joke, but it’s been too long like this. One of these days we must either give up or settle in the same place.”

“Settle here,” she says.

“A man can dream.” His smile returns at the thought. With a yawn, he stretches out beside her in the bed and reaches out to squeeze her shoulder. “I shouldn’t be away so long this time. Another year, maybe. Just long enough for us each to collect some more interesting stories.”

“You’re really leaving tomorrow?”

“ _Sì_ , _sì_. I only needed a few hours in the city. The rest were for you.”

“Then I’d better spend the night.”

“You must,” he agrees. “We can say our goodbyes over a cup of coffee.” And then they yawn in perfect harmony, shifting closer to each other in the bed. It’s as natural as breathing; Zevran’s the only man Isabela’s ever slept easy next to.

She starts to say something else, to thank him for the evening and his presence and everything else in between, but his eyes are already closed and his breath is already steadying. He’s warm and solid beside her, and when she finally sleeps, she sleeps as soundly as she has in months.

When the morning comes, there’s no time for much—they manage a quick cup of hotel coffee that doesn’t do much to alleviate their matching headaches, stuff Zevran’s things back into his luggage, and then stagger down to the lobby to wait for their respective cabs. He makes her promise to text him more often and locks their pinkies in a vow to call every once in awhile.

“And I want updates on that little bird of yours,” he tells her, and she groans and mumbles something noncommittal while he tightens his arms around her and laughs into her ear.

When her cab pulls away, he stands there half-dressed and smiling on the sidewalk, waving goodbye with both hands. _This_ is what friendship feels like, Isabela thinks, watching him until he disappears. The sort of friendship where they've been fucking for years, perhaps, but friendship nonetheless.

This isn't what it feels like with Hawke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one deeply tragic fact is just how many hours i put into two minor parts of this chapter: 1. writing out the star signs of every character for one scene in the first half, and 2. an elaborate timeline to get everyone's ages as precise as possible for one line in the second half. i drafted this literal years ago and have been tweaking both things ever since. 
> 
> that's the kind of effort and quality you can expect from me, folks: thoroughly unnecessary and sort of weird.


	5. Chapter 5

ix. october 3

The vote stands tied at two and two. Merrill casts her vote in their group message first, an overwhelmingly enthusiastic  _ YES!!! CAN I COME PLEASE?  _ Anders is the second to reply: _ yes! just do it already.  _ Aveline takes longer to respond; somehow, she needs forty-one minutes to put together a seven word text.  _ I don’t think it’s an amazing idea.  _ And Fenris pads across the apartment to stand over Hawke, his hands on his hips, and demands to know what would make her think this will work.

(“I’m super fun and charming,” Hawke answers, and he groans into his hands for ten seconds straight and marches back to bed.)

And so Hawke texts Varric, her tie-breaker, separately.  _ did you get the group text? can i take off early tomorrow night? but also say no if this idea is very very dumb. _

She watches her screen as Varric starts to type, stops, and then starts again. Then her phone rings.

“How early?”

“Hi to you too,” Hawke says. She shifts, sinking deeper into her cocoon of blankets on the couch. “Did you tragically break both thumbs in a hot air balloon accident? Why are you calling?”

“To talk. Believe it or not, phones can be used for that, too.” Varric chuckles. “How early do you want off?”

Hawke pauses. “Are you saying yes?”

“Is ten okay? Can you make it tonight? Tomorrow’s gonna be nuts.”

“Sure, yes! Yes, ten is good. But—wait—you really think I should ask her out?”

“I’m not endorsing anything, okay? This is not a vote of confidence.” Something that’s either a laugh or a sigh crackles in her ear. “But if you think you’ve got a shot, then I’ve got your back, Cowboy.”

“But do  _ you  _ think I do?”

He takes a moment before he replies. “Honestly? Probably not. No offense. But then again, I’ve never seen her hanging on like this before, so you never know.” He laughs; Hawke can picture him shaking his head. “But we all like having her around, so don’t fuck it up. Just be cool about it.”

“Sure,” Hawke says, “sure, I can be cool.” She ignores Varric’s derisive snort and thanks him instead, so profusely that he finally hangs up. She leaps off the couch, newly energized, and shimmies all the way across the loft to come to a dramatic halt in front of Fenris.

“I’m gonna do it,” she announces. “Tell me I should do it.” 

He squints up at her, then sighs.

“Fine. As long as you don’t wear that shirt.”

Final vote: four to one.

At last, clad in a new-and-improved outfit (even if a plaid shirt ‘borrowed’ from Fenris’s closet is the nicest clean thing either of them could scrounge up) and with a spring in her step, Hawke swings through the doors of the Hanged Man. She greets Varric with a cry of “honey, I’m home,” steals a bag of chips from his lunch in the back, and takes up her post at the bar.

And then she waits.

But not for long. Tonight, Isabela arrives in the first big wave of would-be drunks, her smile sunshine-bright as she sidles up to the bar. And maybe Hawke’s biased—and maybe she thinks this every time Isabela walks in—but she doesn’t think Isabela could possibly be more beautiful. She starts to say that, starts to say something about Isabela’s eyes or her smile or her legs in that dress... only she can’t quite get the words out, and instead she just grins like a dope.

“Hello there, sweetness,” Isabela says, dropping into a seat. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Hi,” Hawke says. She clears her throat, rubs the back of her neck, and manages a slightly-less-dopey grin. “Sorry. Welcome. You look nice tonight.”

“Obviously.” She smiles. “So do you. What are you all dressed up for? All of your dorkiest t-shirts stolen and a hairbrush left behind in their place?”

“Oh, ah—” Hawke pauses, tugs at her shirt collar self-consciously. “Special occasion. It’s my first night off early in forever.”

“Well, that  _ is  _ exciting. When do I lose your company here?”

“I’m off at ten, but—”

She laughs. “That’s not much of an early night. Tell Varric he works you too hard.”

Hawke can feel her cheeks going hot; she distracts herself by rummaging for a glass. “I probably won’t say that. Let me buy you a drink tonight—what do you want?”

“You’re too sweet. Dealer’s choice.” Isabela pauses, lips pursed for a moment. “I’d say you looked prepared for a date, but I didn’t know you were seeing someone.” There’s a hint of a question to her voice. Hawke somehow doesn’t drop the glass she’s holding.

“I am definitely not seeing someone.” She laughs, shakes her head, and steadies her hands around a cocktail shaker. “I genuinely can’t even remember the last time I was alone with a woman somewhere other than the back closet.”

“Hm,” Isabela says. “Probably last night in the bathroom.” She smiles for a moment and accepts the offered drink, her voice slipping into a teasing lilt: “Are you on the prowl tonight, then? Looking for love in all the wrong places?”

“I don’t really have plans tonight,” Hawke says, halting and awkward, not quite sure how to steer the conversation anywhere remotely close to where she’d like it. “Do you?”

Isabela gestures around the room. “These are all the plans I’ve got. I’m a free spirit. Going where the wind takes me and all that.”

Hawke swallows, too nervous now for even the most nervous of laughs. “D’you want to hang out once I’m off, maybe?”

“What?”

“We could go somewhere. Do something.” She clears her throat; this is not exactly the suave moment of triumph she’d been picturing. “Since I don’t have plans and you don’t have plans, maybe we could not have plans together.” That’s not any better; she stops again and makes a noble third attempt. “I could buy you another drink somewhere nicer than here. You wouldn’t even have to tip me at the end.”

Isabela looks slightly stricken all the way through, but at the last line, a laugh replaces her look of horror. “Did you practice that?”

“Oh, yeah, totally. All day.” Pink-cheeked, nails digging into the palms of her fists, bouncing on the balls of her feet, Hawke tries one last time: “But it might be nice to spend some time together outside of the bar. Without everyone else, I mean. Just us.”

Silence hangs between them for what feels like a lifetime, and then Isabela takes a sip of her drink. “I’m sorry, sweet thing, but I’d rather not.”

Hawke exhales. “Okay. It's not a big deal. I just thought, maybe if you were desperately pining for my company, I could do you a favor and hang out. Sort of a pity thing.”

Isabela smiles. “You're so generous.”

“Maybe another time.”

“I don’t think so,” she answers.

So Hawke had come across clear enough to get rejected, then, at least. Isabela says it so _gently,_ as soft and tender as Hawke has ever heard her say anything, that she feels only one second away from sinking into the earth from sheer humiliation. She reaches for Isabela’s glass, which she’d emptied quickly while Hawke had stammered and stumbled for an eternity. “Let me get you another drink—”

“That’s alright.” Isabela reaches out, her fingertips skimming over Hawke’s wrist. “I think one will do tonight. But I hope you go out and have a nice time in my honor.”

“Don’t leave,” Hawke says. “Give me a second and then—hold on a second?”

She turns to greet the newest patron, reaches for a glass, and when she looks back, Isabela is halfway across the room.

Someone fills Isabela’s seat nearly as soon as she departs, and Hawke watches her over his shoulder until she’s out the door. She doesn’t look back, but Hawke can’t look away. And all night, as the minutes slowly, agonizingly crawl towards ten, Hawke keeps looking back at the same spot as if Isabela might have reappeared. The night passes slow and lonely without that smile across the counter. 

Hawke’s phone alarm buzzes in her pocket when the clock strikes ten. She entertains the idea of staying, because she might as well, and then decides that curling up into a ball of misery at home is preferable to spending another minute at the bar.

“Varric!” Hawke catches him by the elbow, jerking his attention away from the crowd he's entertaining with a story about that time that  _ no shit, I was this close—  _ “Hey! It’s ten. Can I go?”

He lifts his brows. “You have a hot date?”

“Even better: I have instant noodles and a full season of Bake Off waiting for me at home.”

“Oh. Well,” he says, “maybe that's for the best, huh? Go on home and make a full recovery. And, listen—”

“Yeah, yeah. No lecture. I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Alright.” He shakes the sorrow from his eyes and lifts a hand. “G’night, Cowboy.”

Hawke pushes her way through the crowded bar. The most shitty rock song she thinks she’s ever heard is blaring from the jukebox; behind her, Varric has started up again with some elaborate, bullshit story. She can barely hear herself think over the chugging guitar and the noises of the bar, which is at least an improvement over thinking. 

“I’m sorry,” Aveline says. “I saw her leaving. But you tried. That’s what counts.”

“Yeah,” Hawke says, her mind far away. “Yeah, I—”

And then the door swings open.

“You're still here,” Isabela says. Her cheeks are flushed, her hair is wild, and she’s the best thing Hawke’s ever seen in her life. “I thought you would be gone by now.”

Hawke blinks. “Are you disappointed?”

“Relieved,” Isabela says, and then they aren't speaking anymore.

Isabela hits her like a hurricane, both of them stumbling backwards, almost falling and then falling into an embrace instead. They’re nearly pressed too close together to kiss; somehow, heroically, they manage.

Aveline's booming shout jolts them apart: “Eugh! Get a room!”

A room isn’t enough to hold them. Laughing, still tangled up in each other’s arms, they stumble past Aveline and out into the night. They need the whole city—they need the spilled-ink stretch of sky above, they need every square of sidewalk, and even that might not be enough tonight. Hawke can’t manage to let go of her. She keeps her hands in Isabela’s hair, her shoulders bent to keep their smiles an inch apart, and kisses her once and once again as they stumble together down the empty sidewalk.

“What are you doing?” Hawke asks. There’s an ache behind her eyes like she might cry, but instead she can’t stop laughing. “What the fuck are you  _ doing  _ here?”

“Lost an earring,” Isabela says, and promptly flicks Hawke on the shoulder. “What do you think, you goose? I wanted to see you.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t say goodnight.”

“You came back just to say goodnight?”

“Yes,” Isabela says. And then she kisses Hawke again, which makes the answer all the more satisfying.

This,  _ this  _ is new: kissing just to kiss, cradling each other almost hesitantly—Hawke’s hands on Isabela’s cheeks, Isabela’s hands resting at the nape of her neck. It’s slow and soft and tender, and every passing second further burns it onto Hawke’s mind and body. When they break apart again, Hawke can still feel Isabela’s lips on hers like a breath or a brand.

“Well,” Hawke says, “goodnight, then.”

“You’re insufferable. Never speak to me again.”

“I can’t talk if you’re kissing me.”

“Hm,” Isabela says. And she obliges.

Somehow, this time, their hands end up clasped between them. Hawke knows Isabela’s hands by now—every inch of her knows Isabela’s hands—but like the kiss, this is new. Tentatively, Hawke touches their fingertips together and then trails her touch down to the cool metal of Isabela’s rings and the bump of a scar on one knuckle; finally Isabela’s hands tighten around Hawke’s and hold her still. When they separate, Hawke glances down at their entwined hands in disbelief. She clears her throat.

“I’m glad you came back.”

“Oh, I had to. I didn’t squeeze into this dress to go home without as much as a kiss.” She starts to lift her hands as if to gesture at the dress in question, then opts to hold onto Hawke instead. 

Hawke grins. “Thanks for picking me to kiss you, then.”

“Any time, sweet thing,” Isabela says. She smiles and squeezes Hawke’s hands. “Any time.”

“So where should we go?” Hawke asks, the whole plan vivid in her mind without needing an answer. The diner down the block is open for hours still, and Hawke can already picture them crammed into the same side of a plush, cozy booth—flirting and talking to the sounds of a jukebox instead of the roar of a bar, a sober kiss goodnight and a promise to do this again sometime. “There’s this little place just a minute away—”

“Hawke,” Isabela says. In the space of one syllable, her tone shifts and Hawke’s heart drops.

“What?”

“I told you, I only wanted to say goodnight.” Isabela shifts, glances over Hawke’s shoulder at nothing in particular, and pulls her hands back to fold them in front of her. She takes a step backwards and out of the streetlight’s glow, a shadow separating them. “Don’t be difficult.”

Hawke feels almost certain that’s not what she said, not really, but she’s not quite certain enough to object. That’s what Isabela does, time and time again: right when Hawke thinks she’s on solid ground, Isabela turns it into quicksand. “Why did you come back if you’re just going to be upset with me?”

“I’m not upset with you.”

“You are. You were as soon as I asked you out.” Hawke pauses, takes a breath, and tries to tamp down the petulant hurt creeping into her voice—tries to sound like someone who can manage being cool about this. “Weren’t you?”

Isabela presses her lips together, and Hawke has her answer. “You know—”

“Because that’s not what I meant,” Hawke interrupts. “I know you don’t want to, to... go  _ out.  _ I thought we could grab something to eat and maybe go back to mine, but I didn’t mean what you think I mean.”

“You didn’t mean ‘go out’ when you said ‘go out,’ is that it?”

“I meant ‘go forth and eat waffles.’”

“But you said—”

“I said—”

They both start, stumble over their words, and grind to a halt; Hawke’s mind, still foggy from the sheer blunt force of kissing Isabela, can’t come up with excuses quickly enough to keep up with her mouth. And Isabela mostly just looks like she wants to take off running in the opposite direction.

But it’s Isabela who manages to recover first. She takes a step away, lifting her hands in a plea. “If I’ve given you the wrong idea, I didn’t mean to. Like I said, I wanted to say goodbye. That’s... it’s all I can do tonight.”

“You haven’t,” Hawke says, already so wrapped up in the wrong idea that there’s no time for any other idea to so much as flicker in her mind. “I think you have the wrong idea about me.”

“Now’s the time to correct me, then.”

It never once occurs to Hawke to tell the truth, Hawke, who prides herself on being honest and straightforward and true. It doesn’t even occur to her that she’s lying, not really, just like it’s never occurred to her that Isabela might be giving her something less than the truth; that’s what happens when she’s around Isabela. She’d say anything to stay, anything at all. “I just want to be your friend.”

Isabela’s expression changes at that, but it’s no less inscrutable. “We are friends. But I thought you—”

“We’re not friends if all we ever do is fuck at the bar. Is that all you want? That’s fine, but it’s not friendship. Friends hang out. Friends aren’t afraid to get coffee together.”

“You  _ are  _ my friend. I don’t want to ruin that.”

“Nothing will. Honest to God, Isabela. Trust me.”

“I’m trying. I—”

“Then lay off it,” Hawke says, stubborn and persistent and foolish. “Please.”

“I just don’t want it to change for the worse,” Isabela says. She shakes her head. “I think it would. If it did.” For a moment, her expression slips into something unrecognizable, dark and sad. Tired.

And Hawke can’t bear to be the one to make her look like that, so she puts on her biggest, brightest smile. “God,” she says. “I only wanted to eat some waffles, Isabela. I wasn’t trying to die on the battlefield in a duel for your heart.”

They stand there for a moment. At last, Isabela laughs. She shakes her head, runs her hands through her wild hair, and shrugs—a display of sheepishness that Hawke has never once seen from her. “I’m sorry,” she says. That’s new, too.

“What for?”

“I’m being silly tonight. Ridiculous.” She exhales. “We’re friends. Friends go out.”

“I know all my friends have probably made me sound like an idiot, but I’m actually not.” Hawke shakes her head. “You don’t have to be paranoid.”

“No. Not an idiot.” Isabela’s lips twitch with a smile. “A bit of a sensitive baby, maybe.”

Hawke groans. “Don’t listen to them! Never listen! That was your first mistake!”

“I’m sure they have choice things to say about me, too.”

Hawke hesitates and then they both laugh. “No,” she says, “solemnly swear.”

“The conceited whore and the sensitive baby. That’s what everyone thinks.” Another big smile tugs at her lips. “Well, I think it’s terribly old-fashioned to say that a whore and a baby can’t be just friends.”

“That’s what I’ve always heard.” Hawke laughs. “It  _ is _ a little conceited, isn’t it, to worry everyone’s always falling in love with you?”

“It’s only that I’m so incredibly beautiful,” Isabela says.

“Maybe I should be worried,” Hawke says. “Maybe you’re the one with a crush on me. I happen to also be famously good-looking.”

Isabela tilts her head and squints. “Maybe, from the right angle—”

“Hey!”

“You are, you are. You’re gorgeous and a good friend, and I’m glad you’re mine. My friend. Is that good enough?”

“That sounds perfect,” Hawke says. She pauses. “So. Friend. Pal. I really am hungry, if you wanted to do... something.”

“Not tonight. But I promise we will soon. Deal?” she asks.

Hawke can more than live with that. “Deal.”

“Get home safe,” Isabela says, her voice low and serious—like she really means it, like it’s not just a thing people say. She hesitates, like she’s going to say something else, and then shakes her head. “You’re working tomorrow night?”

“I am.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.” Isabela goes up on her tiptoes to kiss Hawke’s cheek—lingering there for a second that feels like forever. “Get home safe,” she repeats, before turning to go. 

“See you then,” Hawke calls after her. She takes a breath and dares: “Can’t wait.” Isabela turns around, flashes her perfect smile, and blows her another kiss. 

Hawke stands on the sidewalk and watches her walk away, waiting for the disappointment to sink in. But it doesn’t. She waits and she waits until Isabela has disappeared into the night, until she’s all alone on the sidewalk staring at the spot where Isabela used to be, and the sting of failure never comes. Instead, Hawke catches herself smiling. 

It’s not what she wanted, but it’s close. This is Isabela leaving only to come back, Isabela who pulled them both out of the dream of the bar and into the city, and Isabela’s anger melting into a shy goodbye. No, better than that. A _see you tomorrow._ Hawke could live on pointed looks and see you tomorrows. 

But then again, maybe she won’t have to. Because for a moment everything was right: Isabela  _ came back,  _ and they kissed on the sidewalk, all tangled up and happy and perfect _.  _

Hawke asked, and she tried, and she kept asking and trying. And Isabela came back. That's what she chooses to take from this. It’s easy enough, she thinks, to forget all the rest.

x. october 12

“Is Hawke here tonight?” The words are out of her mouth before she can think about them, before the door of the bar has even shut behind her. But Isabela can’t bother caring about that, because all she cares about right now—and every time she walks in—is whether or not Hawke is here. She shrugs out of her coat and smooths down the front of her dress, which is new and uncomfortable and won’t be worth the damn trouble until she sees Hawke. “How do I look?”

“Slutty,” Aveline says. She frowns. “You used to at least say hello. You're getting fond of Hawke, I suppose.”

Isabela rolls her eyes so hard that she thinks they might fall out of her head. It’s the same word Zevran had used just last month; she’s getting awfully sick of it. “You make 'fond' sound like a dirty word, big girl. Let me teach you some more interesting ones.” She glances over Aveline's shoulder (a considerable feat), but she doesn't see Hawke at the bar.

Aveline wrinkles her nose. “Keep your curses to yourself. I'm just a little suspicious. I didn't know you had it in you to be this fond.”

“I'm not  _fond_ ,” Isabela snaps, and now she's the one saying it like it's dirty. “I just enjoy sitting on her face every once in a while. Why don't you and Donnic give it a shot some time? Maybe you'd be a little less tense.” 

“Nonsense,” Aveline says. “You like me like this.”

“I’d like you better if—”

Aveline cuts her off just in time. “Yes, by the way. She's here.”

Isabela sees her then, coming out of the back with a broom—probably to take care of a glass she dropped herself, Isabela thinks. The tension slides right out of her shoulders, and she even manages to give Aveline a smile before making her way to meet Hawke at the site of the crime.

“Hi, sweet thing,” Isabela greets her, reveling in the way Hawke lights up at the sight of her. Yes, she thinks: the dress is officially worth it. “Recklessly destroying property again?”

“Isabela! You’re early tonight! Go sit down and I’ll be right there.” 

She sends Isabela off to the bar with that big smile still plastered on her face. It’s downright contagious, and once she’s seated, Isabela can’t help but turn to watch Hawke from across the room, soaking in the way Hawke grins every time she looks up to meet Isabela’s eyes.

Isabela doesn't think she's ever met anyone so frustratingly genuine—so absolutely shameless in her enthusiasm about... everything. She has the sort of smile that lights up her whole face and an irredeemably goofy crowing laugh that bursts straight from her chest, and Isabela’s a little bit obsessed with both.

Luckily, it didn't take her long to learn that anything is enough to make Hawke laugh. She laughs out a greeting when Isabela arrives at the bar; she laughs when she's telling a joke long before she arrives at the punchline; she laughs at everything. But even as easy as it is, Isabela can't help but feel pleased and proud every time she says something that merits a laugh.

And so she watches Hawke from across the room, unable to keep a smile off her own face, cherishing every look Hawke gives her in return. It’s embarrassing, Isabela thinks. She ought to be embarrassed.

She might have time to think about being embarrassed if she could stop thinking about last week. When she looks at Hawke, bagging up the dustpan of broken glass, she can’t see anything other than Hawke beneath the streetlight, hands in her pockets and that inescapable big smile as they reassured one another that everything was absolutely fine.

Coming back that night had taken every last ounce of strength Isabela had. Fleeing had been easy. It would have been so easy to stay there, at home, and ignored everything on the other side of the door. She could’ve finished that bottle of wine—maybe put on a record, taken a bath, smoked a joint, finished the ice cream in the freezer, absolutely anything else. That would have been a lovely night. She could’ve done all sorts of things that would have been easier than coming back. But instead she got halfway through the bottle and couldn’t stop thinking about Zevran’s knowing smile and the way he said  _ little bird  _ in a way that made her feel guilty and nauseous and dizzy. And then she got three-quarters of the way through the bottle and couldn’t stop thinking about Hawke, tugging at the collar of her shirt, those blue eyes wide and hopeful like she actually believed that Isabela could say yes.

So she came back. She came back drunk and desperate, ready to give Hawke everything. And she did. It took absolutely everything she had just to come back, to stand there and kiss Hawke goodnight and hope and pray that Hawke would accept it without question—that Hawke would understand that this was all she had to give, and that it might be enough.

But Hawke couldn’t accept anything without question, because she was Hawke, and Isabela couldn’t keep her nerve. She’d tried to explain, but Hawke had been too busy backtracking to listen. Isabela tried and tried and they stood there, having two separate conversations, digging their own holes deeper, and then she stopped trying. If Hawke wanted it to be all or nothing, so be it. They found themselves right back where they were before: nowhere at all.

At the beginning, Isabela had convinced herself that Hawke might not care. She’d been so impossible to read: hard to get, or at least hard to get undressed, and then so ready to agree on every one of Isabela’s rules. She’d made Isabela feel like the fool for doubting her. And that was exactly what she did again that night on the sidewalk, acting like Isabela was so ridiculous for thinking Hawke had done anything other than be her friend—like Hawke hadn’t asked her out hours before. Like Hawke didn’t look at Isabela the same way Isabela looked at her. It would nearly make her hate Hawke if—well, if she could. But she can’t.

And that’s where it stands between them. Maybe Hawke doesn’t care at all and maybe Hawke cares too much; maybe Isabela cares that Hawke cares and maybe Isabela cares that Hawke doesn’t care. It’s all incredibly helpful, thought-provoking stuff. All she knows is that she tried and it wasn’t enough, and that she’s here again anyway. And that Hawke, behind the counter again and approaching her with a smile, looks lovely tonight.

“Hi again.” Hawke leans against the bar, arms crossed over her chest and cocky grin across her face, every inch the central-casting bartender. She's close enough for Isabela to count the freckles on her nose.

If she wanted to, that is. Instead, Isabela takes a breath and tries not to want to.

“Hi again,” she echoes. “It’s awfully rude to keep your best customer waiting, you know.”

“I’ll make it up to you. First drink’s on me.”

“Make it a double, then.” Isabela smiles. She props her chin on her hands, watching Hawke pour the drink. She can’t remember the last time she needed to actually ask for what she wants; Hawke gets it right every time. “Such a generous bartender. How many drinks do you think I owe you?”

“Hundreds. Thousands.” Hawke grins and slides her the glass and a coaster. “Possibly millions. You’ll have to come up with some way to make it up to me.”

“Careful there, sweet thing.” Isabela smiles at her over the lip of the glass. “Isn’t it a little early in the evening to start thinking about how I can make it up to you?”

Hawke opens her mouth and closes it again. The tip of her nose is suddenly pink, but for once, her smile and her voice are steady. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“On the other hand,” Isabela muses, “that sounds terribly similar to what I’ve been thinking about all day. And terribly similar to what I was thinking about last night when I had to go home alone without seeing you.”

“You were thinking about me last night?”

“Oh, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.” Isabela takes another sip and grins, watching the color spread across Hawke’s cheeks. “Weren’t you thinking about me?”

“All the time,” Hawke says. She shakes her head, slow, her smile confident despite the blush. Her voice drops, so low Isabela can hardly hear her over the noise of the bar. “I was up all night thinking about you.”

“Were you? I want to hear more about that,” Isabela says. She reaches out, touching Hawke’s hand. “Only you’ll have to save it for later, because I've got to run to the restroom.” 

Warm satisfaction rises up in her when Hawke flinches in eager recognition. She finishes her drink in one gulp and stands. When she glances over her shoulder to see Hawke making hasty excuses to step away from the bar, a thrill courses through her like it's the very first time.

Isabela has just enough time to touch up her lipstick—a violent red—in the bathroom mirror before she hears the door swing open. This is better, she thinks, staring down her own reflection. This is good and this is easy. They don’t have to talk. They can give each other what they have, and it can be enough. She takes a breath, puts on a smile, and tugs the front of her dress down just an inch. 

And then Hawke appears in the mirror.

“You're going to be the death of me,” Hawke says.

“You might be right, sweet thing.”

Hawke laughs, low and breathy, and kisses the back of Isabela's neck. And then she tightens her grip on Isabela's hips, twists her around, and lifts her to the bathroom counter. “This is what I was thinking about. I was thinking that I might fuck you right here,” Hawke says, her voice so calm that Isabela hardly recognizes it. Only the smile brightening her blue eyes makes her familiar. “What do you think?”

Isabela drags Hawke close by the collar of her t-shirt to kiss her, hand tight on her collar and teeth scraping over Hawke's lip. “I think you’re going to have to ask nicer than that,” she murmurs. “Maybe even beg for it.”

“I can beg.” Hawke catches the hem of Isabela’s dress, pushing it up her thighs inch by inch. Her lips ghost along Isabela’s ear, down her jaw, against her throat. “Or I can show you how badly I want you instead.”

“Mm,” Isabela breathes—because as much as she’d like to see Hawke beg for it, she’d rather let Hawke keep doing  _ exactly  _ what she’s doing.

There’s no taking it slow these days, only white-hot hunger and the sense of desperate urgency that comes with their setting. It seems like there’s hardly time to blink before Isabela’s leaning back, gripping the counter for the little support there is, and spreading her legs for Hawke’s mouth. She watches and soaks in the sight of Hawke’s knotted hair, of lipstick up and down her throat when she lifts her head to meet Isabela’s eyes again, of her dress pushed up as high as it will go and beneath it, Hawke’s long fingers pressing into her thighs. The image kaleidoscopes through her lashes, Hawke shifting, indistinct, everywhere at once; when she looks up again, all Isabela can see are blue, blue eyes. 

It’s too much, almost. Too lovely. She pushes Hawke’s head back down again and closes her eyes. She can feel Hawke’s fingers slipping ever-lower, no longer simply holding her steady but now approaching her slick, hot thighs—already on fire from Hawke’s mouth well before her electric fingertips made their way here. Hawke’s never subtle about showing what she wants. 

And Isabela wants to give it to her, wants desperately, right now, to have Hawke inside her, wants her so bad that she could nearly cry or scream at the thought. She takes one shaking breath and does her best to pretend that she doesn’t.

“Be a good girl,” Isabela tells her, as haughty and cool as she can manage with Hawke’s mouth between her legs. Her fingers tighten in Hawke’s hair, just enough; Hawke’s moan vibrates through them both. “When do you get to fuck me?”

Hawke tilts her head back to stare at Isabela. “When you say so.”

“That’s right.” Isabela slides her hand down the line of Hawke’s jaw to cup her cheek, sticky to the touch. “Or what?”

And then Hawke grins—her ridiculous, goofy grin, and answers with laughter on her lips. “Or I’m very, very naughty and need to be punished.”

Isabela nearly chokes. “God, shut up,” she says, and then, unable to hold out: “For once in your life, shut up and fuck me.”

The order barely has time to leave her lips before Hawke’s moving again, pushing her dress up higher with one hand, and then the other hand— 

Isabela gasps so sharply that tears sting in the corners of her eyes, her legs clenching tight around Hawke and the two fingers curling inside her. 

_ Another,  _ she tries to say, only she can’t speak, can’t think, can’t do anything other than do her very, very best to hold herself together with Hawke working to make her fall apart. But she doesn’t have to speak, of course: they  _ know  _ each other now, know what every breath and every touch means, and when Isabela rolls her hips against Hawke’s palm and moans just right, Hawke gives her exactly what she needs. Over the noise of her own ragged breathing and the gasps and cries she can’t bite back, Isabela hears Hawke’s voice break through, low and rough and perfect.

“You’re so beautiful,” Hawke says, or something like it, her lips on Isabela’s neck now. “You’re so fucking beautiful right now. I just want to look at you forever. I never want to stop—”

And then the world crashes to a halt and Isabela can’t hear anything, fire rolling across her body from her belly to her fingertips, exploding in her chest, behind her eyes, between her legs. She doesn’t feel Hawke moving but she feels the way Hawke pulls her closer, into her neck and against her chest, and it’s the sound of Hawke’s heartbeat that finally pulls her back to Earth.

For a long, long minute they stand frozen. Foreheads pressed together, Hawke’s fingers still warm and sticky on Isabela’s bare legs, they don’t shift an inch—just breathe, unsteady until it’s not, until they’ve slipped into the same rhythm. Isabela’s just starting to think that she could stay like that all night when Hawke takes half a step back.

“Wow,” Hawke says. She pauses, lips parted, and clears her throat. “Wow. Did you, ah... did you have a good time? I had a good time.”

Isabela, not quite recovered but doing her damnedest to act like it, nods. “I’m too much for you. Admit it.”

“No,” Hawke says. She leans back in until they’re an inch apart. “You’re just right for me.”

“Mm,” Isabela says, too busy kissing her again to argue the point. It’s a slow, careful, lingering kiss, so gentle you could nearly call it chaste if Hawke didn’t still taste like Isabela. It’s the sweetest Isabela’s ever been kissed with her bare ass on a bathroom counter, which is a thought that nearly makes her burst out laughing and ruin the whole thing. Somehow she resists.

She cups Hawke’s cheek in one hand and breaks the kiss. “Don't forget to wipe that lipstick off. I'll see you soon,” she says, trailing a finger down Hawke's neck to her collarbone. Isabela can feel her swallow. All Hawke manages is a nod. 

Isabela straightens her dress, carefully pushes her hair back behind her ears, and saunters out of the bathroom with just one parting smile over her shoulder. (It might have a more impressive effect if she could walk steadily, she supposes, but she does the best she can, given the circumstances.)

Like nearly always, there's just a hint of chaos in the bar when she steps back out, given the fact that the second bartender is still trying to catch her breath in the bathroom. Isabela pushes through the small crowd around Varric and makes her way back to her spot. Merrill—sweet, loyal Merrill—has arrived and faithfully saved her a seat. Isabela dances her fingers over Merrill's shoulders and overall straps as she slides into her seat.

“Happy to see me, Kitten?

Merrill nods. “Where's Hawke?” she asks. Both her hands are wrapped around the glass bottle of her soda (mango and lemongrass—Hawke has started keeping increasingly strange, obscure flavors in the back refrigerator just for Merrill, which makes Isabela positively queasy with affection).

Isabela laughs and does her very best to look innocent; it doesn't come naturally to her. “Now, why would I know where Hawke is?”

“You all think I'm so oblivious but I'm not.” Merrill huffs and shakes her head. “Did you have something very important to talk about?”

Isabela pauses—lips parted, one brow raised, amusement sparkling in her eyes. “Something like that.”

“What were you talking about?”

Varric, who's finally made a dent in the waiting crowd, interrupts with a chuckle and a shake of his head; he slides a beer down the counter to Isabela and gives her a pointed look that she chooses to ignore. “You don't want to know, Daisy.”

When it hits her, it's obvious. Merrill's cheeks turn crimson, her jaw clamps shut, and Isabela bursts into laughter. She throws an arm over Merrill's shoulders, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “It didn't take you too long this time.”

“Is it always sex? Every time?”

“Not often enough.”

Merrill looks suspicious. “But that's not everything, is it? Your eyes get all sparkly when you look at Hawke. That's why I always think it's something different.”

Isabela flinches—like it's an accusation, like it's not just Merrill being as sweet and lovely as always. She takes a swig of her beer and prays for nonchalance. “Who, me? Kitten, I don't think I could sparkle if my life depended on it.”

“But you do for Hawke,” Merrill repeats, as if it's a statement of fact. She takes a sip of her soda and crinkles her nose, eyeing the label suspiciously for a moment before she continues. “Like Aveline gets sparkly over Donnic and Varric gets sparkly for old smelly liquor.”

“I really don't think—” Isabela starts, but Merrill is unstoppable.

“You look at her like... like she's a parade! A big parade with balloons and dancers and—oh!—and fireworks! Like the big fireworks they have at the beach. Except maybe she's the beach and you're the fireworks. She's so steady, you know, she really is so sweet and wonderful, and you're so lovely and... and so explosive, and—”

“Merrill,” Isabela tries again, and then she repeats herself, firmer this time: “Merrill. Slow down. You're sweet, but that's not what it's like for Hawke and me. I mean it.”

“Oh.” Merrill grinds to a slow halt, her mouth hanging open for a moment before she remembers to close it. Her brow furrows as she turns Isabela's words over in her mind. “Does Hawke know that?”

And then Hawke appears. “Do I know what?”

“How Isabela says you're not—”

Isabela drowns her out. “How fed up I am waiting for my favorite bartender to show up! Where were you?”

Hawke blushes. “I was, um, just in the bathroom.”

Isabela raises a brow, tries to point to a spot on her neck as subtly as possible: one red streak still disappears beneath Hawke's collar. Hawke doesn't seem to notice. (Not that it would matter. Isabela has gotten the feeling that Hawke  _ likes  _ walking out with lipstick smeared all over her neck, which is perfectly fine, since Isabela likes having Hawke walk out, hair tangled and neck marred with lipstick and more than the occasional adolescent bruise. It's always enough for a white-hot possessive thrill to coil in her belly, making her want to pull Hawke right back to the bathroom. Some nights she indulges that impulse. Tonight, she settles for a slow drag of her eyes over Hawke.)

Merrill leans in and lifts her reedy voice over the noise of the bar. “Isn't it dirty in the bathroom? Why don't you ever go back home?”

Hawke frowns. “What, to use the toilet?”

“No! For sex.”

“Oh.” Hawke lifts her eyes to the ceiling. “So  _ that's  _ what you were talking about.”

Isabela laughs. “What else, sweet thing?”

“The bathroom is clean,” Hawke says, defensive. “I clean it.”

“And Hawke sleeps on the floor in a warehouse, so the bathroom is really luxurious,” Isabela points out.

“That's not true! I sleep on a mattress on the floor in a modern  _ loft _ .”

“In a warehouse,” Isabela clarifies. She'd been there a month ago for the house-warming (warehouse-warming) party—just an hour, long enough to drop off the gift of a bottle of wine and a potted cactus from her own apartment that she'd imagined even Fenris and Hawke couldn't kill. (They had killed it already, of course, each blaming the other.) The space had still been mostly empty then, just a few mismatched pieces of furniture between the two of them, little to it but concrete beams and bare brick walls—and Hawke's mattress up on the lofted mezzanine. When she tried to imagine Hawke at home, she still couldn't quite fill in the space in her mind.

“Anyway,” Hawke says, before Isabela has to come up with a cute and charming explanation as to why she'd rather be tossed into the river than invite Hawke to spend the night, “it's only sex, Merrill. It doesn’t have to be anywhere special.”

It's the same thing Isabela said, nearly to the word. And that's enough for Merrill to relent, to cheerily change the subject to plans for Anders' birthday (a progressive dinner, Merrill suggests, which earns a groan of  _ not again  _ from Hawke so melodramatic that Isabela immediately demands to know the story behind it). But Merrill doesn't move on without one more pointed glance at Isabela.

It shouldn't bother her, but it does. And it bothers her long after she's said her goodbyes and made her way home, long after she's stretched out in bed and done everything she can to forget. It's downright maddening, the way that Merrill always manages to say things that stick in her head and keep her awake for hours. 

Isabela is a well-practiced liar—an all-time great, really, an absolute professional. She’s always been proud of that. She lies shamelessly, frequently, breezily; she lies to her friends, to Hawke, to herself maybe most of all. She likes the cool distance of a lie, the way it lifts you above everyone foolish enough to believe you; she likes the way that, repeated often enough, a lie can turn into an ugly sort of truth. It’s one thing to make everyone believe you, but it’s quite another to convince yourself. That’s a real talent.

But whenever Merrill turns those big green eyes on Isabela and looks right into the darkest corner of her heart—Merrill, who doesn’t believe her for a minute—the whole towering scaffold of Isabela’s lies becomes visible, and she teeters up there at the top, not sure if she’ll jump or if she’ll fall. Whenever Merrill looks at her, Isabela’s not so sure she’s a good liar after all.

So she rises from her bed and makes her way to the fire escape with a pack of cigarettes and a blanket around her shoulders for the cold. There, Isabela strips it down to the studs. Hawke is lovely, Hawke is kind, Hawke is fireworks and parades and a thousand better things, too. She’s brash and stubborn and naïve and  _ good _ . Isabela wouldn’t know how to give Hawke anything even if she tried. She hardly knows what it is that Hawke wants, anyway. But she knows that Hawke’s smile reminds her of the sunrise; she knows that she aches for Hawke when they’re not together in a way she can’t put words to yet or maybe ever. And she knows that everyone is starting to see right through her. 

Isabela wants Hawke; more than that, she wants Hawke to stop wanting her. She wants Hawke to take no for an answer. She wants to not be the villain. She wants all of this to be obvious so they can stop talking around it and breathe a little easier with each other. She wants Hawke to understand. 

Lately, Isabela thinks, all she does is  _ want _ . 

She's trying not to. But sometimes she catches herself thinking things like  _ maybe it wouldn’t be so bad,  _ or  _ things might be different,  _ or  _ if it had to be anyone _ —

She can only think like that for so long before she starts to feel like she’s drowning; she can only think about Hawke’s tenderness for so long before she thinks about her own sharp edges. She’s done it before: taken a good heart and left it in shreds. She can’t do that again, not with  _ this  _ heart. 

Isabela flicks ashes out into the night and tugs the blanket closer around her shoulders with her other hand. From here, the city looks bright and clean and alive, the streetlights shining like stars, eight million people somewhere out there laughing with their friends or going home to their families. All these years in the city and it still doesn’t feel like home, not really; even now, sometimes she still feels like she’s on the run. And that’s what scares her most: that maybe there’s something fundamentally rotten inside her, that maybe she’ll never feel like she’s at home anywhere or with anyone. 

Maybe there are some things that happen to you that you can’t run away from, not really.

And it’s fine, she thinks. She’s fine. She’s alive and that’s enough. This is what she has to offer right now, right this minute, and Hawke can take it or she can leave it, but Isabela can’t give up what she doesn’t have. It’s going to have to be enough. It has to.

When she takes a deep breath, it’s steadier now. She lights another cigarette and watches the moon make its way across the sky. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've taken so damn long - like uhh almost a year?? - that it's october and i've caught back up to the timeline! so i've officially lost the right to make semi-plausible excuses for taking for-fucking-ever to update. i'mj ust...like this. this is me.mp3


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